Just a Soldier
by Siu Jerk Jai
Summary: After Shepard is poisoned on Omega, Jacob volunteers to lure out Morinth. His experience changes the way he views himself, his asari crewmate, and his commander. Rated M for language and "the prize" in chapter 6.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's note: Many, many thanks to Prisoner 24601 for her beta._

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_Armor banged against armor as Shepard shouldered through a group of batarians to the door of Afterlife's lower level. They glared at her back, and Jacob's hand went to his pistol's grip. From the corner of his eye, he saw Samara watching the batarians as well. Shepard didn't seem to notice; she'd been quiet since they'd left the dead girl's apartment. Probably not a good sign. Normally she was a hardass, didn't have time for coddling her crew or the people they were helping. Something about seeing the girl's mother had affected her, though Jacob knew she'd deny it if he asked. They had that in common.

"Any idea how we get to the VIP lounge?" she asked as they entered the bar. He got the gist more from the shape of her mouth than from her actual voice. Cranking up the bass and drowning conversation seemed to be the norm at Omega's hottest nightclub.

He shook his head. Samara did too. The muscles in Shepard's jaw racheted a little tighter, and her gaze roved impatiently around the bar before settling on the bartender. She shoved past a dancing asari and her turian partner. Unlike the batarians, they took one look at her armor and scurried away.

"Looking for the VIP lounge," Shepard shouted to the bartender when she reached the bar. The batarian's only answer was to lean forward and keep polishing a glass with a dingy-looking rag. Jacob couldn't tell if he really couldn't hear or if he was just choosing to be uncooperative to the humans. He knew Shepard had the same thought; she unholstered her pistol and set it on the bar. Four eyes blinked down at the barrel as the bartender stepped closer to them.

"What are you looking for?" he yelled.

"VIP lounge," Shepard yelled back.

"Main entrance is through the markets." He set the glass down and reached below the bar to pull out a bottle. "You won't get in without a password though, no matter what you're packing."

"We'll manage," Shepard replied as she collected her pistol and turned away.

"Hey, wait." The batarian poured a shot from the bottle as Shepard turned back toward him. He pushed it forward across the bar with a nod. "On the house." Raising an eyebrow, Shepard just stared at him until he squirmed. "Look, orders from Aria are you get her special guest treatment. I'm just trying to keep my job and not get my ass kicked."

Shepard picked up the drink and threw it back. She tossed the glass back onto the bar, where it wobbled in a precarious circle before settling on the pitted wood. "Then you might want to have a doctor check out that selective hearing."

"I'll do that," he muttered, snatching up the glass with a narrow-eyed smile.

"Thanks for the drink," Shepard said, then headed back toward the exit. Jacob nodded to the bartender as he followed—guy hadn't actually messed with them, which was more than you could say about most people on Omega—but all he got back was a sneer.

After pushing their way across the dance floor and out the back door, they finally emerged onto an alley that smelled like trash and piss but was at least quiet. Shepard took point, and Jacob and Samara flanked her from behind. The only people they passed were a few groups of skulking vorcha, who shot them dirty looks, and a batarian huddled on the ground, wrapped in a ragged jacket and twitching in a fitful sleep. The Council races tried to sell it like that kind of thing only happened on places like Omega, but Jacob had seen beggars just as bad off right in the Wards. And no one gave a damn, as long as they didn't drag themselves onto the Presidium.

Just as they passed the batarian, Shepard pulled up short. For a second, Jacob thought she had stopped for the beggar—whether to toss him a credit or give him a boot in the ass to get him moving, he wasn't sure. She half-turned, looking back the way they had come, but didn't say a word. Jacob shared a glance with Samara; a thin furrow creased the asari's brow, the only lines on her otherwise flawless face.

"See something, Commander?" Jacob asked.

Shepard's head pivoted toward him, tilting at an odd angle. Adrenaline pumped through his gut when he saw the confused crinkle between her eyebrows. Brown eyes—normally sharp enough to separate one target from a seeker swarm—swam sluggish across his face.

"Somethin's… not righ'…" she murmured. He had half a second to react before she pitched forward, and only his battlefield reflexes kept her head from hitting the filth-smeared walkway. She folded in half over his arm as he caught her around the waist. He lowered her to her knees, then grabbed her shoulders with his other arm so he could lay her down.

"Shepard?" Looking for her pulse wasn't easy when his own heart was hammering through his chest. "Shepard, can you hear me?"

A yellow glow painted Shepard's face as Samara knelt and lit up her omni-tool. Skin that should have been only a few shades lighter than his washed out pale and gray. Even under the harsh lights of the Lazarus labs, even _dead_, he'd never seen her looking like this.

"There is a toxin in her system."

"Toxin?" Jacob flipped open his own omni-tool and scanned it over Shepard's body. Too many readouts flared red for his brain to take it in. This wasn't happening, not when the Collectors were still out there. Not when he was kneeling in a back alley on Omega like an idiot with nothing to shoot and no way to help her.

"Her body appears to be filtering it out." The justicar frowned as she adjusted her readings. "There are mechanical elements at work."

"Cerberus upgrades," Jacob explained. One by one the displays flipped from red to green. He sat back on his heels for one long exhale, then leaned forward again as Shepard's eyelids fluttered.

Sliding a hand under her shaved head, he eased her into a sitting position. She hunched forward and steadied herself with both hands on the ground. His gloved fingers skimmed down to her lower back; energy sparked into his fingertips as they passed her biotic amp. "Say something, Commander."

"How many drinks did I have?" she slurred.

"Just one," Samara answered. The justicar rose smoothly to her feet and scanned the alley for any physical threat.

"That batarian bartender," Jacob added. "Had to be."

Shepard grunted. "Did he say he didn't want his ass kicked? Because he's about to be real disappointed." When she turned her head, her eyes were only inches from Jacob's. Her pupils were pinpoints swallowed by the lighter brown irises. "Help me up."

"You sure about that, Commander? You're not looking so hot."

She snorted, then groaned and pressed the heel of one hand against her forehead. "Wow. Not a sweet talker, are you?"

Jacob glanced toward Samara, but the asari was turned toward the far end of the alley, maybe to check for trouble, but he got the feeling she was giving them a moment to collect themselves. One-thousand-year-old matriarchs didn't get shaken by simple poisonings, he guessed.

His hand curled around her back toward her hip, and for one stupid second, he wished that she weren't wearing armor, that he could feel the reassuring warmth of her skin through nothing but fabric. "You know me, Shepard," he murmured. "Not one for bullshitting."

"There's bullshitting and then there's tact, Mr. Taylor." She exhaled, not quite a sigh, and let her head drop against his shoulder. Her face rolled in toward his neck. The skin of her forehead was clammy with sweat against his jaw, but he could feel warm breath tickle his collar bone.

They sat like that for no more than half a minute, then she grabbed a handful of his uniform and started to hoist herself up; he had no choice but to stand and help her. When they managed to get to their feet, his arm still wrapped around her waist, she looked away toward Samara, who had turned back and rejoined them.

"All right," Shepard said. "We have a quick _conversation_ with that batarian asshole and then find Morinth."

Jacob shook his head. "Not a chance, Commander. You're going back to the _Normandy_." He looked to Samara for backup, but the asari's intense blue eyes focused only on Shepard.

"I'm not risking her getting away," Shepard replied. "Not after the detour we made for this."

Jacob looked back and forth between Shepard's ashen face and Samara's furrowed brow and tense jaw. The justicar wouldn't meet his gaze. He knew Samara had sunk a lot of time and effort into catching this ardat-whatever, but he wouldn't have guessed she'd risk Shepard's health over it.

He tightened his grip on Shepard to remind her that she wasn't even standing on her own. "You really think you're going to pick up an asari looking for a good time the way you look right now?"

Pulling away, Shepard scowled, either at him or at the way her legs wobbled without his support. "One more knock about my looks and you're the one heading back to the _Normandy_."

"I'm serious, Shepard. It's not going to work." He crossed his arms over his chest. "You want to catch this asari so bad, I'll be the bait."

She shot him a glare. "You really think you can do better?"

He nodded to Samara. "Let the expert decide."

This time Samara met his eyes. A faint prickling washed over his skin, starting at the amp at the base of his neck, as the justicar approached him. She reached out with one hand, her outspread fingers hovering a centimeter from his chest. The black of her pupils swelled, though not quite enough to drown out the blue.

After a silent moment, she inclined her head. "There is an aura of potential about him, as if he hovers on the cusp of greatness. This will appeal to Morinth, to destroy the blossom before it blooms."

Shepard cocked an eyebrow. "You hear that, Jacob? You're blossoming."

He nodded. "Damn straight."

Shepard took a turn looking between him and Samara, then cut her hand through the air. "Fine. Let's just get the bitch so we can get back to our real work." Without another word, she turned and stalked off.


	2. Chapter 2

Too many eyes watched Jacob enter the club for Shepard's liking. Not that she could blame anyone for staring. While she'd gone back to Afterlife to encourage the bartender to try one of his own drinks, he'd ducked into one of the shops in the market and come out with his uniform stuffed into a pack. In its place he wore a ridiculously tight pair of pants and an even tighter black T-shirt that revealed chiseled arms and barely concealed the taut lines of his broad chest and shoulders. His skin seemed to absorb the dim ambient light until it cast a sheen that begged to be touched. Her raised eyebrow had been met by a slow smile, like he knew exactly what he looked like and exactly what it had her thinking.

If Morinth had any interest in human males, she was about to be handed a near-perfect specimen.

The doors slid shut behind him, swallowing up the music that had spilled out when they split apart. The ambient buzz of the market filled the alley, rising and falling and occasionally piercing the air with a raucous laugh or a short-lived shriek. Shepard paced from the entrance of the narrow alley to the motionless form of the justicar and back again, her gaze never far from the entrance and its turian bouncer. He shot a stray glance at the alley now and then, as if he could feel two intent sets of eyes.

Samara remained silent as long minutes passed. If she were feeling any hesitation about hunting down her own daughter, no outward sign showed on the ageless face. Shepard paused at the far end of the alley, wondering if the asari would grieve, if she'd find the tears that had overwhelmed the mother of the girl Morinth had killed. Witnessing the woman's pain, her anger, Shepard had considered her own mother for the first time. She hadn't thought to ask Anderson if Hannah Shepard had attended the funeral, if she knew her daughter was alive. Decades of distance and mutual disappointment made it less than an afterthought. When Jacob had dismissed his father as the past, Shepard hadn't pushed because she'd known exactly what he meant.

What mattered was the present. Shepard resumed pacing, focusing on the subaudible rhythm that hummed through her biotic amp whenever she drew near the justicar. She guessed the asari always had a low-level mass effect field surrounding her body; she doubted Samara was even aware of it anymore.

"This is taking too long," Shepard muttered.

"If there were trouble, we would undoubtedly hear it," Samara responded.

Shepard only grunted. She wasn't in the mood for logic. Logic said this was a good plan. Logic said it was better to risk Jacob than her. She was Commander Shepard. Jacob wasn't anything. He wasn't the best fighter, the most powerful biotic, the most skilled tech. He wasn't even the best leader Cerberus had given her. In a normal Alliance squad, he would have been a top officer. Among the crew she'd assembled, he was expendable. Like any good soldier.

"You care for him."

Shepard met Samara's placid gaze with a sharp glare. "I need my crew. Dried-out husks won't do me any good against the Collectors."

"Of course." The matriarch turned back to the doors, tensing as they slid back to reveal an asari in black leather. Even in the moment before Jacob appeared, Shepard knew this was who they were after. She looked like Samara, moved like her, but her face and walk promised a contained energy, a fire that the reserved justicar didn't have or maybe just didn't let show anymore. Morinth lacked Samara's intimidating control, putting her power out there on display, inviting in those she deemed worthy. And, Shepard had to admit, she couldn't imagine anyone wouldn't want to be worthy of what she was offering.

Morinth smiled over her shoulder, and Jacob followed her out of the bar, one of his hands coming to rest on the small of her back to guide her through the crowds. The asari laughed and leaned in to whisper something against his ear; Jacob bent down closer, then grinned and murmured something back. He looked relaxed, natural. Under any other circumstances, the act would have entertained Shepard. Jacob Taylor didn't flirt or play games; he stood stiffly in the armory, rebuffing idle conversation, and once he decided he was interested, he just flat-out said it. Watching him smile—and _laugh _for God's sake—reassured Shepard of his control of the plan almost as much as if he'd looked back at them and flashed a thumbs-up.

She turned to Samara as the Omega crowds swallowed the couple. If the justicar could burn holes in someone just by staring, Morinth wouldn't have been a problem anymore.

"Are you ready for this?" Shepard asked.

Samara blinked, then refocused her gaze on Shepard. "Yes. We should follow at a discreet distance. Do not be concerned with keeping them in sight. Now that I have been near her again, I will be able to find her presence even among the din."

Shepard nodded and moved out to merge with the streams of pedestrian traffic. At this hour, more than a few had imbibed more than their share, and she and Samara had to weave an increasingly circuitous path to avoid getting stepped on, elbowed, or groped. One waddling volus nearly got the butt of Shepard's rifle in his faceplate when his hand closed on her ass, but he stumbled away, musing to himself about why the Shepard VI was glaring at him.

"I hate this place," she muttered.

"These people need a champion," Samara replied. "Officer Vakarian was not wrong in that."

Shepard scowled after the volus. "I'm more concerned right now with _my _people."

"We are not far." Samara gestured toward a quieter, branching walkway. "This way."

The passed through a set of doors into a residential area, and the noise of the markets dissipated as they hissed closed again. Samara moved more quickly now, her bootheels ringing against the walkway. Shepard trotted along behind, hand on her pistol and eyes scanning for any visible threats, even as her brain reminded her that Morinth shouldn't know they were coming and was unlikely to have any kind of force waiting to attack them. Then again, they'd had to fight through an entire base of Eclipse mercs on Ilium just to find out what ship she'd left on.

Following Samara around a corner, Shepard nearly stumbled as the asari pulled up short. "What?" Shepard asked.

"She has begun the melding process," Samara said.

"Are you shitting me? She led that other girl on for _weeks_."

"Jacob's contrast to that girl is too compelling. She wishes to feel them both within her." The justicar broke into a run, Shepard right behind her. "Assist him," she continued as they dashed down the silent corridor. "His mind must not be connected to hers when I kill her."

Shepard barely had time to nod before a blue glow engulfed the asari's body. Thrusting forward both hands, she propelled a tidal wave of energy that blew apart the doors of the apartment at the end of the corridor. Shepard raced in behind her, ears ringing from the blast. Samara's voice cut through the tinny echo as she shouted her daughter's name.

After a moment's shock, Morinth scrambled away from Jacob's embrace. He slumped forward toward her, hands bracing himself on the black-and-white couch. As the two asari unleashed biotic assaults at each other, Shepard ducked low, then vaulted over the back of the couch. She slipped around Jacob's legs until she could face him.

"Jacob." When he didn't respond, she shook his shoulder. Around them the apartment's furniture sailed through the air, carried by roiling currents of dark energy that crackled up Shepard's spine and across her amp. She grabbed Jacob's chin, forcing his eyes up to meet hers. His vacant gaze slid past her face, dilated pupils leaving only the thinnest sliver of brown around the black.

"You!" Morinth shouted, and Shepard whipped her head toward the asari. Mass effect fields ten times the strength she'd ever seen a human produce pulsed and shattered between them. "You're his commander! You're Shepard. I am as strong as she is. Let me join you."

"I am already sworn to help you, Shepard," Samara called. "Let us finish this."

Curling her lip back in a sneer of distaste, Shepard threw a shockwave at the younger asari. Her power was nothing to theirs, but the extra push broke the stalemate, sending Morinth flying back across the floor. "End of the line, Morinth."

The bitch responsible for that girl's death, whose energy still clung to Jacob like a parasite, glared up at her. "And they call me a monster."

Samara stalked toward her daughter, and Shepard took Jacob's face in both her hands, shaking him as she poured biotic energy into his amp.

"Jacob!" she barked. "Barrier! Now!"

His eyes squeezed shut, and for a second, she thought he still hadn't heard her. Then a shimmering blue field shoved her palms away from his skin as if repelled by a magnet of the same charge, and Jacob slumped forward again. Shepard's head snapped back to the two asari; Samara held her daughter by the throat, her eyes drowning in black.

"Find peace in the embrace of the goddess."

A resounding crack. Then silence.

Shepard turned away as mourning replaced battle. She'd been asked to help with the fight; carrying any remorse or regret was Samara's burden. The energy field around Jacob flared out, and she reached out to squeeze his shoulder.

"You still with us?" she asked.

"Yeah," he muttered. He straightened, rubbing a hand over his face. "Yeah." When he looked over at her, his pupils had contracted back to normal. He started to push himself to his feet but staggered forward. Shepard jumped up to wedge a shoulder under his arm.

"Sorry, Commander," he said. "Room's still spinning."

Shepard adjusted her grip and bent her legs until she could bear most of his weight. "You need a minute?"

"Maybe." He glanced toward Samara's kneeling form and the body lying on the floor. "Not here though."

Shepard nodded. "Fair enough."

With her help, Jacob wove an unsteady path out the apartment door, through the rest of the building, and out onto the main throughfare. More of his weight pressed down on her with every step, and she could hear him panting even at this slow pace. Just as they neared a cluster of overturned crated discarded by the side of the walkway, Shepard heard sharp bootheels behind them. She glanced over her shoulder; Samara would overtake them quickly. She steered Jacob toward the crates and helped lower him down to sit on the largest.

"Catch your breath." He didn't respond, just bent over with his head between his knees like someone trying not to black out.

Samara approached, but Shepard intercepted her before she reached the crates. "Is this normal?" she asked in a low voice, nodding toward Jacob.

"I do not know," Samara replied. "A victim does not usually survive the attentions of an ardat-yakshi." She stepped toward Jacob, dropping to kneel before him, one glowing hand stretched toward him again. He jerked back like he'd been burned.

"What are you doing?" he snapped.

Shepard couldn't remember ever seeing Samara surprised, but she blinked at Jacob with wide eyes. "I'd like to make sure there are no permanent effects."

Jacob blew out a breath. "All right." He lowered his head to his hands again. "Just ask next time," he muttered to the floor.

"My apologies," Samara murmured as she closed her eyes.

Seconds stretched into minutes and neither Samara nor Jacob moved. They might as well have been meditating in the observation lounge of the _Normandy_. Mostly Shepard found Samara's serenity soothing, but one in a while, it just struck her as really damn annoying. Years of military training kept her from pacing or fiddling with the safety of her pistol but not from interrupting after five wordless minutes.

"Well?"

Samara opened her eyes, and Jacob raised his head to meet her gaze. "I don't sense any lasting damage. Of course I suggest you consult with the human doctor once we return to the _Normandy_." After a moment's pause, the justicar laid a hand on Jacob's arm. "Thank you for your assistance in this matter. Words cannot express my gratitude."

He glanced up at Shepard, surprise on his face, then nodded. "It's good we got it done. No one else'll die like that girl." He began to rise, and Samara's hand slid under his elbow to help him. "Now let's get the hell out of here."

"You good to walk?" Shepard asked.

Straightening his shoulders, he nodded again, and Samara released her hold on his arm. "If it gets us back to the ship and away from here… yeah, I'm good."


	3. Chapter 3

Jacob sat on the edge of the medbay table, hunch-shouldered, elbows resting on his knees. He'd never felt so… _drained_ was the right word, but he shied away from even thinking it. He'd risked death more or less on a constant basis all of his adult life; every time you put on the uniform, you agreed to face it one more time. But this was different. This wasn't a shot in the gut or a drive core leak or even some alien virus. That asari had tried to pull the life right out of him. Worst of all, he'd almost let her.

Shepard stood at the end of the table with her arms crossed over her chest, and he could feel her eyes on him. "What's the damage, doctor?" she asked.

Knowing he should probably care about the answer, Jacob made the effort to raise his head toward where Dr. Chakwas sat tapping at a console. "Samara was correct; there shouldn't be any permanent damage. Mostly I'm seeing dehydration, low electrolyte counts, depleted hormone levels…"

"You make it sound like he just ran a marathon."

The doctor's lips quirked in a small smirk. "More like he just engaged in a days-long session of sex. If a human male were capable of such a thing."

He didn't need to look at her to know Shepard answered with a smirk of her own. "Now you're just insulting Jacob, doc."

"You two finished?" he asked. A trickle of irritation seeped through the exhaustion, but more because they were preventing him from seeking out his bunk than because they were making casual jokes about his sexual prowess.

Sobering her expression, the doctor rose and nodded. "I can't clear you for duty until you've had at least twelve hours' rest. Come back after that and we'll see if your levels have improved."

He nodded back and slid off the table. At least his feet kept him upright now. Mostly. Pressing one hand against the table for balance, he gestured with the other toward Shepard. "And the commander?"

"I'm fine," Shepard insisted, turning a glare on him. Jacob ignored her as the doctor pulled up the other set of scans displayed on the medbay monitor.

"Absolutely normal," Chakwas said. "Better than normal, actually. Without your omni-tool readings, I might think you were pulling my leg about there even having been a toxin."

If Shepard said "I told you so," Jacob didn't hear it. Now that he knew they were both fine—or soon would be—the outcry for rest from his body drowned out everything else. He shuffled out of the medbay and past the crowded mess hall tables. Waves and a few "You all right?"-type questions greeted him; he replied with a weary nod and a "Just need some shut-eye." As he rounded the elevator, he heard boots on the deck behind him, and just before he reached crew quarters, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He closed his eyes against a longing look at the door and suppressed a sigh before turning back to Shepard.

"Where are you going?" she asked, which at that moment struck him as an annoyingly stupid question.

"My bunk," he almost snapped. The trickle of irritation had risen to a stab. "Supposed to rest, remember?"

Instead of snapping back, she shook her head. "You really think you're going to get twelve hours of decent rest in crew quarters? You'll be up at every shift change. Come to my cabin."

Jacob's muddled brain struggled to process the unexpected suggestion. And its implications. "Bad idea, Shepard."

She shrugged. "What's the problem? You said there were no regs against fraternization on a Cerberus ship." One eyebrow and a corner of her lips lifted in a smirk. "Unless that asari has you rethinking where you and I were headed."

"No. No, it's not that." He glanced back toward the mess hall and lowered his voice. "I'm not big on being a hot topic in ship scuttlebutt."

Crossing her arms across her chest, Shepard rolled her eyes. "Look, I'll go down and make a big show of working at my terminal in CIC, all right?"

"For twelve hours? That's a long shift."

She threw her hands up. "Then I'll go annoy Joker for awhile. Or hang out in the mess. Anywhere where there will be lots of witnesses to the fact that I am not in my cabin ravishing you." One of her hands dropped to her side. The other skimmed down his arm until her fingers just barely rested in his. When she touched him like that—and so far, taking a hand or brushing a shoulder was about all they'd managed—he knew that _she _knew exactly what he felt, the warmth that spread over him, the almost magnetic pull toward her.

"You need the rest, jackass," she murmured. "Don't make me order you."

Shepard liked to push him, and for some reason the fact that she wanted to push, made him want to let her.

"All right," Jacob sighed. "You win."

"Don't you forget it, Mr. Taylor." Her hand slipped away as she turned back to the elevator. He followed her inside; she punched the button to send them up to her cabin, and he slumped against the back wall, letting his head sag forward and his eyes slide closed as the doors shut. Slender fingers twined with his again.

"You look like shit."

He opened his eyes to give her a pointed look. "What happened to tact, Shepard?"

She shrugged. "I don't need tact. I outrank you."

The elevator stopped, so he just shook his head as the doors opened. Shepard crossed the vacant corridor to her cabin, then dropped his hand to key open the door. While she stepped inside and made straight for her personal console, Jacob hovered in the doorway, taking in Shepard's private space. A fish tank with no fish took up one wall, and a display case with no display bisected the room—the cabin of a grown-up spacer kid, too used to small spaces built only for function.

One of Shepard's hands lifted from the console to wave him inside. "Make yourself at home." When he started toward the couch, she made an annoyed sound in the back of her throat. "The bed, Jacob. And take off your boots."

The way she said it sounded like a challenge, so once he'd dropped down on the edge of her bed—which admittedly was a hell of a lot more comfortable than his bunk—he did her one better and stripped off his shirt as well. He folded his arms over his chest and waited for her to finish whatever it was she was doing.

After a few more keystrokes, she glanced up at him through the glass of the empty display case. A slow smile spread across her lips. Moving away from the console, she circled around to saunter down the steps to the sleeping area. When she reached the bottom step, she paused, mirroring his posture by crossing her arms under her chest.

"I transferred all the files I need to my console in CIC, so I won't disturb you."

He nodded. Seconds passed in silence, but she made no move forward and no attempt to hide the way her eyes roamed over his bare chest.

Finally he raised an eyebrow. "See something you like, Shepard?"

"Just accumulating some fantasy fuel."

The light from the fish tank filtered blue and painted her skin with a faint glow and cast her eyes in dark shadow. And the way she stood in front of it highlighted every curve of her tight-fitting uniform. She couldn't look more different than she had in that alley.

"You keep looking at me like that and neither of us is going to get any rest," he said.

Her smile turned sly, and she stalked toward him, a sway in her hips. She sat beside him on the bed, and her fingers traced a path around the amp at the base of his neck. A shiver slid down his spine, but—though he was sure Shepard wasn't the only one who would picture this scene when alone in her bunk—his body didn't react any more than that.

"I'm serious, Shepard. You heard the doctor. I just finished a sex marathon."

"Don't always assume I have ulterior motives," she groused. Her hand circled around to rest against his jaw, and her brown eyes fixed on his. "Maybe I just want to make sure you're all right."

Out in the field, he didn't always agree with her actions, and he didn't hesitate to call her out when she came on too strong. But once in awhile she let down. He still wasn't sure why she opened up to him, but when she did, he saw and heard things that made him keep following her, that made him trust the motives behind the methods, that made him want to see more.

"I feel like I owe you an apology," he said.

She pulled away, leaning back with her hands behind her on the mattress. "You got the job done, Jacob. I doubt anyone else could have done any better."

Despite his exhaustion, his hand inched closer across the blanket to the warmth of her leg. "I meant more of a personal apology."

Her smirk tinged just shy of arrogant. "And if I thought for one second you wanted the mind-controlling asari of your own free will, you might need to give me one."

He shook his head. "Damn, that was messed up. One second I'm just trying to keep her talking and the next I would have done anything for her. I would have killed you, Shepard."

Her expression didn't change. "You would have tried."

"I'm serious," he insisted, frowning.

Her smirk faded as she raised an eyebrow. "So am I."

Back on Omega, when he'd helped her up, he'd had no doubt he could scoop her into his arms and carry her all the way back to the ship without breaking a sweat. Sitting beside him without her armor on, her arms were half the size of his. She had the edge in biotics, but not by as much as he would have thought before personally seeing her in action, not by as much as her reputation led him to believe. But the reputation wasn't bullshit. When push came to shove, Shepard got the job done. Pit her against anyone on the crew, not just him, and he'd bet every cent she'd be the one to walk away.

He snorted. "All right. You can kick my ass. I get it." He sighed, and the last vestiges of energy trailed away with his breath. His shoulders slumped; his hands rubbed over his face. "I thought we'd encountered just about every type of ugly out there, but this…"

A warm hand slid up his back, then soft lips brushed against his jawline. "Get some sleep, Jacob."

He watched her walk away as he pushed himself further up the mattress. She got as far as the steps before the weight of his weariness propelled him down into the pillows. They smelled good. They smelled like her.

He heard a quiet murmur. "EDI, make sure he's not disturbed."

The AI might have responded, "Understood, Commander," or he might have dreamed it. He drifted off while Shepard's bootfalls still echoed through the cabin.


	4. Chapter 4

_Author's note: When I originally published this story, I had intended that any further Jacob/Shepard ideas would go into a sequel. Now that those ideas are more solid, I think several themes carry over, so I've opted for a continuation instead. (Plus, I admit, I'm very attached to the title of this story.)_

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* * *

_

_Black pupils swelled in blue eyes, swallowing every trace of color and light. Nothing escaped, no reflection, no emotion. Flat. Empty._

_Morinth's full lips parted, split by a flash of white teeth. "You want me."_

_Desire pulled at him stronger than any natural force. Stronger than gravity. He wasn't falling into her; he hurtled toward her faster than light, faster than sound. Her own personal physics ripping the flesh from his bones, turning his bones into dust, before the air shaped into a command finished leaving her lips._

"_Yes." He exhaled the word, returning the air. Breath, blood, muscle, bone, all of it for her._

_Lips curled up, and every neuron in his brain exploded like a sun at bringing her such a small joy. "You'd do anything for me. You'd kill for me."_

_His center shifted, thrown off its axis by this force beyond nature, beyond physical. Her gaze reached into him, digging out the meager essence he could offer, and he let it go. She would keep it safer than he ever had, safer than any of the others—parents, friends, lovers—that he had shown it to._

_His mouth moved to give her his last word, but she didn't take it. His ears had forgotten any sound except her voice, but she turned away at something he didn't hear. Turned away from him. All of him stretched out, reached for her, and grasped nothing. And he knew he'd fall forever, tumbling into the vacuum._

Jerking upright, Jacob strained against the sheets that bound him to the bed. He gasped for air, for light, for sound. Everything was wrong: the bed too soft, the light too blue, the quiet too deep. His hand groped for the bulkhead, to feel the ship's vibrating hum, while his ears strained for Hawthorne's ceaseless snoring. No sound came, and his fingers slipped through thin air before falling into more bunched-up blankets. With an irritated growl, he moved to pull and push them behind him, but as they slid across his chest, he caught the cool, sharp bite of citrus tinting the air. He froze, letting the familiar scent of Shepard's soap or shampoo or whatever it was wash away his sleepy confusion.

He blew out his lips as he flopped back against the pillows. Shepard had let him into her cabin to sleep. The back of his hand brushed the damp pillowcase, and he grimaced into the dim light as he realized he'd repaid her by drenching her sheets in sweat. As he pushed himself to sitting again, he unwound the fabric from around his bare torso, then lifted it up and away so he could swing his legs around and scoot to the edge of a bed much wider than the bunk he was used to. His bare feet hit cold deck, and he lowered his head to hands as he collected the fragments of his rational mind that the nightmare had tried to scatter.

A harsher light than the blue glow of the fish tank penetrated the space between his fingers, and he looked up at the bright green of Shepard's bedside clock. He'd slept for ten hours straight, and he still felt a heavy weariness weighing down his bones. But a mind and muscles trained for no more than six hours' rest prodded him to get to his feet and look around for his discarded clothes. He pulled his shirt over his head and his socks on his feet before stamping into his boots. After latching them, he crossed the deck and climbed the short flight of stairs to Shepard's desk.

The door to the head slid open as he approached, and he ducked inside and pressed the controls for the sink. The water ran cool straight from the tap, a nice change from the crew bathrooms where the water pipes ran too close to the engine vents. Pinpoints of reflected light caught in the mirror as droplets trickled from his fingers. He splashed the water over his face, then leaned forward to inspect his bloodshot eyes.

He still looked like he hadn't slept in a week, and either the dim light was playing tricks on him or his pupils weren't dilating right. With two hours to go on his prescribed rest, he knew Chakwas wouldn't clear him for duty, and there'd be hell to pay if Shepard caught him in the armory without medical release. The thought of choking down some of Gardiner's rations made the acid in his stomach churn.

Part of him wanted to comm down to Shepard. But he knew if she came up, if they were alone in her cabin again, this time nothing would stop them from ending up in that bed together—the bed where he'd just dreamed of being with someone else, where he'd relived that feeling that being without Morinth would more than kill him. He didn't know what he had with Shepard, but he knew it was worth more than that. He hoped it was worth more than that.

What he needed was a way to get that asari out of his head, to sponge away the last lingering bits of her. A meal, a good workout, a shower, jerking off in the shower… none of it would go deep enough, none of it would get past his body. His body wanted Shepard. Chambers would have a field day, but his conscious mind wasn't the problem either. The pull he still felt, the scummy film that still clung to him, that made his brain itch, huddled in a place humans probably didn't even have a word for. Biotics, mind melding… it was all just fiction until they found that relay. Between the time his parents had met and the time he was born, the world had changed forever.

But the galaxy hadn't. None of it was new out here. The stories of the ardat-yakshi were ancient, older than human civilization. All he had to do was find someone born when humans were still clubbing and hacking at each other with broadswords.

His reflection offered him a wry smile instead of wishing him good luck.

* * *

The door to the starboard observation lounge hissed open, but Jacob hesitated on the threshold. He had to dart inside, the back of his armored jacket nearly catching on the door as it slid closed again. The lights inside were set to the lowest illumination—enough to avoid slamming into the furniture but not enough to distract from the panoramic star-strewn black that filled the viewing window.

The blue glow surrounding the figure seated in front of the window, however, was one hell of a distraction. Beneath the crackle of energy across his amp, Jacob felt the thrum of a singularity caught in the moment before its release. His battlefield instincts screamed at him to dive for cover, but he knew the perfect sphere of dark energy balanced in Samara's hands would never be unleashed on the _Normandy_ and that he would never be the target.

Unless he someday did something really stupid after Samara was released from her oath to Shepard. If that was the case, he'd probably deserve it.

The sphere didn't fluctuate and the justicar didn't turn around before breaking the silence. "Jacob. How can I help you?"

"Am I disturbing you?"

The dark energy extinguished with a pop he felt more than heard, and Samara gestured to the space beside her. Jacob stepped forward, and when he stood next to her, she looked up at him with a slight smile.

"Interrupting perhaps. But not all interruptions are unwelcome." A graceful hand waved toward the deck again. "Please join me."

One of the few lessons his mother had managed to impart to him was that when an older woman told you to sit, you sat, so he ignored the protests of his still-aching muscles and lowered himself to the deck. He shifted a few times to try and get comfortable on the hard grating, but the intensity of Samara's gaze made the sweat prickle again across his shoulder blades, so he settled for mimicking her cross-legged posture.

"Is there some assistance I can offer you?" she asked.

"I don't know," Jacob answered. When her eyes narrowed a fraction, he quickly continued. "How much do you know about ardat-yakshi?"

"I know as much as any living asari," Samara replied.

"You've studied them?"

"In a manner of speaking." The justicar's gaze lowered to the empty space that separated them from the window. "I carry the gene that manifests itself in the condition described by the term 'ardat-yakshi.' My partner did as well. Our children were forced to carry the burden of our union."

Jacob felt his gut churn again, like the moment between stepping out of an airlock and the magnetic seals on your boots clamping down. "What happened to them?"

"Two of them accepted a life of isolation." Samara's eyes returned to his, and he felt the weight of all the things they'd seen that he couldn't even imagine. "I hunted the third for centuries until I found and killed her on Omega."

His first thought was to wonder if Shepard knew. His second was whether he still would have offered to help if he'd known. Meeting Samara's gaze, he knew the answer to both was yes. Better than most Jacob appreciated the significance of the confession she'd just made. Exposing the sickest, most twisted part of your own bloodline, even to people you trusted, was its own special brand of vulnerability and humiliation, whether you endured the tears of a bereft mother on Omega or the cringing of abused women on some backwater rock with toxic flora.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Samara inclined her head in acknowledgment. "She had to be made to pay for her crimes. When she first claimed the life of an innocent, my feelings became irrelevant." Her head tilted back, her eyes lifting to the stars beyond the window. "We wish to believe that those we love are incapable of such cruelty, such deception, but the capacity to commit atrocities slumbers in each of us."

Jacob frowned, remembering the logs of the _Gernsback_, the officer who'd tried to put a stop to what happened. Just another of his father's victims, but he wished he'd been in a state of mind to retrieve the logs, retrieve the name. "Most of us wouldn't act on it, though."

The justicar turned back to him, and the smile on her lips made him feel like the raw recruit he hadn't been in a decade. "We wish to believe that, too," she said. A thin furrow creased the space between her eyes. "But this isn't why you came to speak with me."

Jacob took his turn glancing out at the vast emptiness that surrounded the streamlined frigate. "I had a dream."

"A dream of Morinth?"

As he nodded, his eyes returned to Samara. The line in her brow had been joined by a few others. "You experienced a traumatic neural event," she said. "Very nearly a fatal one. It is unsurprising your subconscious would require time to process it."

Chalking it up to normal human brain function would have been easy, but his gut wasn't buying it. "That's not what it felt like. It felt real. Like it was happening again."

Deep blue eyes narrowed, and a tingling wave spread from his amp down his spine. "You believe some remnant of Morinth seeks to prey on your psyche?"

"I don't know," Jacob replied. "But I intend to find out. I thought you might have some ideas."

Samara blinked, almost in slow motion, the only movement in her otherwise still face. "A strict regimen of meditation would allow you to more fully inhabit your own thoughts. Delving more deeply into your own mind would force any anomaly to rise to the surface."

A cramp was forming in his lower back, and Jacob shifted his weight on the deck. He'd probably wrenched something when he woke up from the dream. "I've never been big on meditation," he said.

"Neither was I at your age," Samara said.

Being on the receiving end of a nearly thousand-year-old smile irritated Jacob less than he'd have thought it would. He would have expected it to seem superior or indulgent, but it didn't.

One of his eyebrows rose. "When you were my age, you were just a kid."

"I was speaking in relative terms." Samara raised a hand from the knee it had been resting on and waved it in a small circle. "Meditation is a skill like any other, honed by practice."

Jacob shifted again. "I see your point, but I don't have that kind of time. Once EDI gets that IFF online, Shepard's taking us through the relay. I need my head clear when we hit that Collector base."

Her eyes narrowed again; this time the tingle felt more like ice water dumped down his back. "An alternative would be to merge my mind with yours," Samara said. "I may be able to detect any irregularity, possibly even purge it."

Dead black eyes flashed through his memory, and Jacob's uneasy stomach nearly revolted. "You want to go into my head?"

"I want only to aid you, Jacob," the justicar replied. "These are the two paths I see before us at the present time. Allow me this evening to consider the situation. I may yet discover another option."

"Yeah," Jacob said, swallowing the lump in his throat as he nodded. "Yeah, all right. I should probably try to get some more sleep anyhow."

The tension around Samara's eyes softened. "I hope it will be restful."

"Thanks." Jacob pushed himself to his feet and did his best to keep his doubts on that score from showing on his face. "I'll come back in the morning."

Samara nodded. "Tomorrow then."

As Jacob turned, his amp sizzled a moment before a blue glow threw his silhouette onto the bulkhead in front of him. He pressed the control panel, and the door sliced through his shadow, letting in the light that swallowed it whole.


	5. Chapter 5

Leaning back against the bulkhead in starboard observation, Jacob watched as Dr. Chakwas and Mordin laid out what seemed to him to be an excess of hand-held medical scanners. Precautionary, they'd said, and under Shepard's orders. He hadn't decided yet whether he felt good about that. Samara sat in her usual position on the deck, a hint of amusement quirking her lips as the doctors discussed "the procedure."

Jacob did his best to ignore the box Chakwas had tucked away in a discreet corner; he was no medic, but he knew a crash kit when he saw one.

The door beside him hissed open, and the commander herself walked in. Her hands went to her hips and narrowed brown eyes scanned the rest of the room before turning in Jacob's direction. Her arms dropped to her sides as she approached him, and his lowered from their position folded over his chest.

"Everything ready?" she asked with a tilt of her head toward the trio clustered under the window.

Jacob shrugged. "No idea." He resisted the impulse to cross his arms again. "You don't have to be here." Shepard's chin came down as one of her eyebrows went up, the look she reserved for when she decided what he'd just said was too stupid for an actual response. Shaking his head, Jacob looked to the others. "They really don't have to be here."

"Two of my crew are about to engage in a potentially dangerous exercise." When he turned back to her, Shepard's eyes studied his face like the latest debrief on the Collectors was etched into his skin. "Part of me thinks I should make you hold off until after the mission, but I think that might do more harm than good in the long run."

Part of him wished he'd never mentioned to Shepard what Samara had suggested. But whatever else happened between them, she was still his CO and too much Alliance blue still pumped in his veins to try something like this behind her back.

"Not like you haven't had your share of brain probes," he pointed out. "The Prothean beacons, that asari on Feros, Dr. T'soni…"

"I hadn't just been attacked by an ardat-yakshi," Shepard retorted. "And even so, none of my experiences was exactly pleasant." A small smile curved her full lips. "Except maybe Sha'ira."

Jacob raised an eyebrow. "The asari Consort?" Shepard nodded, her smile deepening, turning sly, like she could picture the mental images running through his brain, like she was confirming they could put any scene from _Vaenia_ to shame. "You might have to tell me about that sometime," he added.

"Maybe I will." Her grin slipped as her eyes darted back toward the window. "Just be careful in there, all right?"

"In where? My own head?"

"Yes." Brown eyes locked back on his, and one of her hands came up until her fingertips just rested on the surface of his cheek. "Seems like it gets kind of thorny in there sometimes."

At some point, he'd been forced to accept that the electric current that ran beneath his skin when Shepard touched him had nothing to do with their biotic fields interacting.

"I like it simple, Shepard," he said. "Nothing but clear horizons."

"Mmm." Her flat tone made it clear just how much she believed that, but she didn't press. Her fingers skimmed down his jaw before pulling away, but her gaze stayed on his. The intensity of just that look had an inner charge thrumming, and he was more than tempted to tell them all to forget it, pack up, he was good—or would be if he could ever get more than five minutes alone with this woman.

But movement snagged in the corner of his eye, and he and Shepard both looked to Chakwas walking toward them.

"Commander, Jacob, we're ready whenever you'd like to begin." She stepped back and Shepard gestured forward, so Jacob walked past them toward the window, trying not to feel like the condemned on the way to execution. Lowering himself to the deck to take his place opposite a cool-eyed asari justicar didn't help the feeling fade.

Mordin leaned forward as Shepard took a seat. "Commander, would like to take more extensive readings. Humans new to galactic stage. Less known about neurologic interaction with other species."

"Samara?" Shepard asked.

"I would prefer as little intrusion as possible," the asari replied. Her eyes never left Jacob, and only sheer force of muscle suppressed the shiver that threatened to slide down his spine.

"You heard the lady," Shepard said. They hadn't started yet, but already her voice sounded further from Jacob's ears than physical distance allowed. "You need to focus on the Collectors anyway."

Mordin sighed with enough drama to draw Jacob's gaze, though he was surprised at the effort required to drag his eyes from Samara's. "True. Yes," the salarian said. "Collectors, Reapers. Much to do, little time. Still, hate to see opportunity wasted."

"No means no, Mordin. Vitals only."

"Understood, Shepard."

Nothing broke the silence after that except the clink of medical instruments and Mordin muttering under his breath, though Jacob couldn't hear if he was going over the scanners or griping to himself about Shepard's decision. Samara's gaze was like a sniper's scope on his face. He knew they were all waiting on him, that the heavy weight of anticipation building in the room would only break when he gave some signal he was ready. One of the first lessons he'd learned at boot was the longer you stood at the airlock, the more empty the vacuum seemed when the hatch snapped back.

He forced his eyes back to Samara's and nodded once. Mordin's muttering stopped. Four sets of eyes crawled across Jacob's skin as Samara nodded back, and he had an irrational flash of gratitude that they had no batarians on the crew. Eight eyes were plenty.

"Relax, Jacob," Samara said. "Slow, deep breaths."

Buried deep inside him, something panicked, the something that dropped in his stomach when he gazed out at the expanse of black surrounding the ship or that squeezed his chest before he charged out into enemy fire. A decade of service had taught him how to swallow that something, force it to the back of his mind and the rear of his brain, to the place that still conceived of him only as an animal tethered to the surface of a blue-and-green ball.

"See nothing but my eyes. Hear nothing but my voice."

Jacob pushed back his resistance and did what he'd been trained to do—follow orders. Mist invaded his peripheral vision. He measured time only by the slow blink of blue eyes. Everything dropped away: the doctors, the instruments, the solid deck, Shepard.

"Feel the connections that bind us, one to another."

As black consumed Samara's eyes, a shrill beeping pierced Jacob's haze, an exact counterpart to the sudden pounding in his chest.

"Commander," a soft voice murmured. His brain made the sluggish connection between the voice and Dr. Chakwas.

With effort like rising from the bottom of the ocean, he forced words to the place outside Samara's gaze. "I'm fine."

"Stay with it, Samara." Shepard's voice. The primal instinct, grown desperate, howled at him to reach to her, to cling to safe anchor and let the current pass. Instead he sank back into the black.

"Let go of your physical shell." Another breath and the black rushed inside him to fill the space between every cell, the vacuum to the void.

"Embrace eternity."

* * *

_Black pupils swelled in blue eyes, swallowing every trace of color and light. Nothing escaped, no reflection, no emotion. Flat. Empty._

_Morinth's full lips parted, split by a flash of white teeth. "You want me."_

_Desire pulled at him stronger than any natural force. Stronger than gravity. He wasn't falling into her; he hurtled toward her faster than light, faster than sound. Her own personal physics ripping the flesh from his bones, turning his bones into dust, before the air shaped into a command finished leaving her lips._

"_Yes." He exhaled the word, returning the air. Breath, blood, muscle, bone, all of it for her._

"No." Another voice whispered in his mind, but it wasn't Morinth, so he ignored it.

_Lips curled up, and every neuron in his brain exploded like a sun at bringing her such a small joy. "You'd do anything for me. You'd kill for me."_

"No," the other voice repeated. "Jacob, this moment is only memory. Separate what you are from what you were."

Tendrils of energy, separate from the power that radiated from Morinth's eyes, burrowed into his chest and tugged. Morinth's face doubled in his vision. One face glowed with the promise to fill him in places he hadn't known he was empty; the other burned with the need to consume him, the hunter's stare the moment before the strike. He flinched back, and the movement caused him to stumble. A hand steadied him, pulling him away and up.

From his new vantage point, he looked back at himself sitting on Morinth's couch, lost to her spell. "That's me."

"It is the you that Morinth trapped," the other voice said.

Jacob turned, and Samara nodded to him in greeting, as if they were passing in the corridors of the ship. "Where are we?" he asked.

One slim blue hand waved at the apartment around them. "We are in your memory of this moment. Or rather, your imagined reconstruction of what this moment must have looked like." Her gaze left him to wander over the furniture, the artwork that adorned the wall, the large window that showed the city below; and the corners of her lips turned upward. "You have a very concrete mind."

"Is that good or bad?"

Samara shrugged and looked back to him. "It is neither. You are extremely grounded and capable of remarkable focus, especially for one so young. You are likely also remarkably stubborn, and your ability to compartmentalize becomes a weakness when you deny connections that would lead you to greater insight."

Rather than reply, Jacob just turned back to watch himself, to see the glazed eyes, the way he leaned into Morinth, mouth hanging open. His stomach (or whatever his very literal brain was perceiving as his stomach) churned, and he swallowed against a surge of disgust and humiliation. "So what do we do?"

"We witness." The quiet resignation in Samara's voice brought his eyes back to her, but she looked past him to the apartment's door. A moment later, a blast ripped through the silence, and he whipped his head back in time to watch the apartment door explode inward in a hail of screaming metal.

"_Morinth!"_

_Samara entered the apartment, preceded by a wave of dark energy that swept Morinth off the couch and slammed her into the far window, the back of her head cracking the glass into a mosaic of shards. Behind Samara, Shepard crouched low, creeping across the debris of the door, pistol in hand. When she reached the couch, one hand gripped the back and she vaulted herself over, then slid over Jacob's legs to face him._

"_Jacob," she said. Her brow knotted as she shook his shoulder. When he didn't respond, she jammed her pistol back in the holster and grabbed his chin, pulling his face down to meet the brown eyes that darted back and forth between his._

"She was concerned for you," Samara said beside him. "More so than I expected. More so than she expected, I think."

"I didn't see this part," Jacob replied, his gaze still on the deep furrows between Shepard's eyebrows, the frantic movement of her eyes in the otherwise stony face.

"No," Samara murmured. "This part of the memory is mine."

_Samara careened across the floor to stop beside the couch in a breathless, panting heap. She scrambled to her feet, whirling to extend her arms and launch an explosive wave of dark energy from her fingertips._

_Power collided and light engulfed the entire scene, as though a blue giant star had burst into existence inside the apartment. Each asari stood her ground, boots digging into the carpet. Two versions of the same mouth—one twisted in hatred, the other set in a grim line._

"_You!" Morinth shouted, and Shepard whipped her head toward the asari. "You're his commander! You're Shepard. I am as strong as she is. Let me join you."_

"_I am already sworn to help you, Shepard," Samara called. "Let us finish this."_

"She tried to get Shepard to take her?" Jacob asked.

"For a moment, I thought Shepard might agree."

"What?" He turned to face the asari beside him. "Not a chance."

"The abilities of my daughters are unique among the asari," the justicar replied, her eyes still bound to the scene playing out before them. "The capacity to dominate the minds of her enemies would have given Shepard a powerful advantage, especially given what we know of Reaper indoctrination."

_A sneer twisted Shepard's full lips as a coil of energy whipped from her hand with a snap. The younger asari stumbled back under the combined onslaught of two opponents. "End of the line, Morinth."_

"Had it merely been a matter of exchanging my life for Morinth's, the strength of Shepard's team might have remained balanced, perhaps even increased," Samara continued. "But accepting Morinth would have likely meant sacrificing you as well, and that Shepard would not do."

_As Samara stalked toward her daughter, Shepard's hands went to either side of Jacob's face, her palms glowing blue. Crackles of energy curled toward the implant on the back of his neck, then snaked up her arms, her chest, her neck, before her eyes blazed, intent on his._ _"Jacob! Barrier! Now!"_

"Power or not, Shepard would never have added Morinth to the team," Jacob insisted. "You saw her face after we met that girl's mother."

"Perhaps you are right," Samara replied absently. Turning away from Shepard, Jacob followed the asari's gaze.

_Samara held her daughter to the floor by the throat, unfazed by Morinth's desperate struggle to free herself. Her left hand pulled back, and all the energy that had been barely contained by the small apartment coalesced in her fist._

"_Find peace in the embrace of the goddess."_

Jacob looked away, clenching his own fists and bracing for the crack that echoed moments later. He kept his eyes on the other figures and watched as Shepard helped his memory self limp out of the apartment. Not long after, one of the justicars strode past him to exit through the twisted remains of the door.

When he turned around, the other Samara—the real Samara, the one that was sitting with him in starboard observation while Mordin and Chakwas and Shepard watched—stared down at the memory of Morinth's corpse.

"What happens now?" he asked.

"We appreciate the truth of this moment," she murmured. She looked up at him, and the light in the apartment, which seemed dim compared to the blinding energy that had come before, reflected off streaks of moisture running down her cheeks. "Look at her, Jacob. Look at my daughter."

Dread made his feet itch to turn and walk away, but he forced his eyes down to the leather-clad body on the floor. Morinth lay on her side, one arm twisted beneath her body, her legs tangled together at the knees. Her face pressed into the carpet, where a small pool of blood gathered. Another trickle leaked from her ear and slid along the curve of her jaw. A drop hesitated on the cusp of her chin, then expanded beyond its capacity to cling to skin and fell in silence.

"She's dead," Jacob said.

"Yes," Samara answered. "She is gone." This time when she looked up at him, her eyes were dry. "We both left too quickly the first time, seeking to put this place behind us. But there is nothing to run from. All that remains is memory, and that you cannot outrun. You must find a way to weave this into the fabric of your life. It is a part of you." She looked down again at the body on the floor. "As it is of me."

For all that Jacob knew he'd been the victim here, that he'd been trying to help Samara on Omega, he felt a twist of guilt. "I'm sorry," he said. "That you had to do this for me."

"I come here often. To remind myself." To his surprise, she offered him a small smile as she met his gaze again. "To be honest, I find I appreciate the company."

"Yeah, all right," Jacob replied. "But let's not do it again anytime soon."

Samara nodded. "Agreed."

Jacob's shoulders twitched at the silence of the empty apartment that still seemed so solid. "So how do we go back?"

Without another glance at the body, Samara lowered herself to the patch of floor right beside it and gestured for him to sit as well. She closed her eyes as he settled himself, resuming a cross-legged posture. In the back of his mind, he felt something almost like a click as the mental form he'd been inhabiting matched his physical self still sitting on the deck of the _Normandy_.

"We do not go back," the justicar said.

Jacob narrowed his eyes, then let out a breath through his nose and rested his hands on his knees. "Because we never left."

Blue eyes opened a sliver as Samara's lips curled up again. When they slid closed, Jacob let his eyes close as well, following her out of the world they'd shared.

* * *

"Jacob?"

The word pounded against the pulled-taut skin of his brain. Other sensations followed—darkness, renewed muttering. His ass had gone numb. He shook his head slightly, and when he opened his eyes, the direction of his gaze skewed more left than he'd expected. Instead of Samara's blue eyes, he looked into Shepard's brown. With each thump of his heart, she blurred out of focus, and in the space between, her edges sharpened. He drew in a deep lungful of air, and she gradually stopped pulsating. A crinkle creased the space between her dark eyebrows.

"Jacob?" Chakwas said again.

"I'm here," he replied.

Shepard's eyes shifted to over his shoulder; whatever sign Chakwas gave her relaxed the crinkle, and she straightened from her leaned-forward position with a grimace and a hand rubbing her neck. "Mordin?" she asked.

"Reading low levels of serotonin, dopamine. Reduced electrolyte count as well."

"I require only rest." Jacob turned from Shepard to Samara, the weariness in her voice catching him off guard, though he knew it shouldn't. She still sat straight, her shoulders back, but her head tilted down, her eyes on the deck.

"You're sure?" Shepard asked.

"Yes, Shepard." When the asari looked up, a thin smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. "This experience is not new to me."

"Fair enough." Shepard got to her feet, then flicked her hand in a gesture that fell just short of ordering the rest of them to do the same. "Get back to work, everyone. We've still got Collectors to fight."

Jacob pushed himself to his feet but then paused. Even looming over Samara, he still felt like he was looking up at her somehow. "Thank you," he said.

She inclined her head. "It was the very least I could do."

An impulse rose in him to say none of it was her fault—not what Morinth had tried to do to him, not what she'd succeeded in doing to hundreds of others—but he swallowed it down. Even when you meant them, platitudes rang hollow. Instead he returned her nod and turned to follow Shepard out into the corridor.

On the threshold, she slowed for a step and he fell in beside her. Her silence lasted into the elevator, which frankly was longer than he had expected. When he pressed the button for the CIC, she frowned, overrode his command, and reset the panel's destination to her cabin. Without a word, he reached across her and changed the command back to the CIC. She glared up at him but crossed her arms across her chest instead of resetting the panel.

"You all right?" she asked as the elevator began to rise.

He mirrored her posture, folding his arms over his chest. "I'm fit for duty."

"That's not what I asked." Despite lacking Samara's centuries, Shepard's gaze carried its own unique brand of intimidation, and she never hesitated to wield it.

Jacob shrugged. "Morinth is gone. It's over."

The elevator slid into place, seamless like always, without a sound or vibration, just the sudden cessation of motion. The doors opened, and he stepped out, Shepard at his heel. As soon as his boots hit deck, Chambers turned. Jacob didn't have a problem with her—she just did her job like everyone else, even if her job was getting in everyone else's business—but he could have done without the perky smile that lit up her face as her eyes darted between him and Shepard. Rumors about him and the commander were starting to filter through the crew. On a frigate the size of the _Normandy_, they were unavoidable, but he'd held out hope they could hold them off until after hitting the Collector base. No such luck.

He quickened his pace toward the relative privacy of the armory; Shepard snorted behind him. After they ducked inside, he headed toward his station, glancing at her over his shoulder. "Something on your mind, Shepard?"

"Nope." Her amused grin rivaled Chambers's as she took her usual spot leaning against the armory table. "How about you? You alone now, or have you got other women stashed in your brain?"

Even without asari mind control, Shepard somehow managed to make the muscles in his lips curl up without his conscious choice. "Just one."

"Is that right?" Her boots slid a soft shuffle on the deck as she moved to stand beside him, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her skin. "If you try to be funny and say it's Miranda, I will shoot you in the groin."

His hand reached out, searching for the dip of her waist, and he turned away from his console to pull her close. "You know who it is, Shepard."

One of her hands went to his chest; the other snaked around his back. The places where muscle and curves cut away from each other left the only spaces between them. The armory felt warm, and a prickling started at the base of his spine where her fingers teased at the waist of his pants.

"I bet I know what she's doing, too," Shepard purred, tilting her head back to look up at him. He took the invitation, dipping his head down toward hers while she stretched up to meet him. Every nerve in his body surged with electricity, like he'd touched a live wire, like the first time he'd ever filled himself with dark energy and felt the power that bound the universe alive in his veins.

In the moment just before the first taste of her touched his lips, when her scent already tingled on his tongue, the comm at his station crackled, and they both froze as Joker's voice filled the silent armory.

"Commander, EDI's got the Reaper IFF patched in. Miranda's asking for you on the bridge."

Shepard's forehead dropped to rest against Jacob's chest. "I swear to God he does that on purpose."

Jacob's fingers tightened their grip, bunching the fabric of her shirt, as Joker cut in again. "What was that, Commander? I didn't copy."

Raising her head, Shepard threw a glare at the comm with enough force that Jacob half-expected the thing to shatter. "I said I heard you. Now shut up."

"Geez," Joker muttered. "Touchy."

"And Joker? Cut this channel or I will personally strip every inch of leather from that glorified armchair you call a pilot's seat."

"Aw, come on, Commander. You know threats will only win you my unwavering obedience."

Shepard sighed and lifted her hand from Jacob's chest to pinch the bridge of her nose. "That's why I keep you around, Joker."

The click that followed echoed loud, then silence resumed, heavy and dull. The electricity had sputtered; even the lights seemed dimmer. Jacob loosened his hold on Shepard's uniform and let his hand skim up and down her back as he lowered his head to hers again, forehead to forehead instead of mouth to mouth.

"You have to go," he murmured.

"Yeah," Shepard said. Her head tilted, twisted, and warm brown eyes engulfed his vision as her breath tickled against his lips. "In about thirty seconds."

Sparks ignited along every inch of his skin as she closed the gap, the circuit. She surged up, pushed against him, and he pushed back, even as his hands sought to help her win, closing on her hips and pulling her up. Their lips parted at the same moment, and he tasted her, warm and smooth, like old scotch. Through sheer force of will, he resisted the urge to gulp her down and let himself sip her, savoring the slow burn that slid down his chest and burned in his gut as they moved in rhythm together. Even so, the ship spun around him when she pulled away.

"Suit up," she whispered against his jaw. "I want you to report to the shuttle in five."

She stepped back, and the cool air from the vents fanned the moisture on his lips as they turned down. "Miranda will want to test the IFF."

"I know," Shepard replied. "We might as well get some work done while she does."

Jacob breathed deeply to encourage his heat-soaked brain and body back to sobriety. "I'll be ready."

If he hadn't been focused on her lips, he might have missed the soft curve as her palm rose to rest against his face. "I know you will," she said, then let out an almost wistful sigh. "My Jacob. After we kick some Collector ass, I am going to screw your brains out for a week."

A slow smirk spread across his face. "Aye, aye, Commander."

Shepard smirked back at him and gave his cheek a light smack before turning toward the door. The clack of her boots accompanied the rhythmic sway of her hips in a song he knew would be stuck in his head for days.

"And bring me a big gun," she called over her shoulder as the door to the CIC whooshed open. He knocked off a salute and grinned as the door slid shut behind her.


	6. Chapter 6

As the elevator rose to Shepard's cabin, Jacob tilted his head side to side and rolled his shoulders to ease the tension in his upper back. Nerves twisted his stomach, and adrenaline pushed his boots to pace the small space. He wanted to lay it all at the feet of the upcoming battle, and maybe he could if he stretched the truth. The move he planned to make wasn't one he wanted to rush, but they didn't have the luxury of time anymore, not after the Collectors took the whole damn crew. Shepard had marched straight from Joker and EDI's debrief to set their course for the Omega-4 Relay, then had turned on her heel and practically punched the elevator control panel. She hadn't given Jacob a second glance.

He wasn't used to pushing somewhere he wasn't sure he was wanted. Most of the time, when he met someone, it was a quick connection on shore leave, an instant attraction consummated, then a mutual wishing of luck before he (or sometimes they) reported back to duty. He was always up front about it—no extranet addresses exchanged, no future plans made. Miranda was probably the closest he'd come to something more, but they'd never crossed this line, both of them pulling up at the last second, neither of them willing to take that last risk. And still, she'd changed the course of his life, tugging him into Cerberus, onto this ship, onto this mission. He did his best to ignore the awkward thought that Miranda probably knew exactly where he was.

The elevator door slid open almost before he'd registered the halt of motion. Before the doubts gnawing his gut could creep up to his brain, he crossed the space to Shepard's door and pressed the panel. Her door hissed back, and he stepped inside, his gaze expecting to find her close by sitting at her console. Instead he had to adjust and peer through the two panes of the empty display case. She sat at the table in her living quarters, staring at the couch, staring at nothing.

He approached quietly. If she heard or noticed him, she gave no sign, and he let himself stop at the top of the three steps leading down. Her back was slightly to him, her face just barely in profile. Dim light darkened already dusky skin and her eyes melted into the surrounding shadows, but a sheen caught on her lips—lips that he realized would have been a distraction if he'd ever before had the chance to just sit and watch like this.

But he hadn't. Every encounter they'd had, every conversation, she'd initiated. She strode into the armory on long legs and swinging hips, then draped herself across his table like a Vindicator rifle waiting to be stripped of its casing. He smiled a little at the thought. Even when Shepard played games, when she prodded or provoked him, it was with a wink and a nod, daring him to take the bait. Just this once, he had the opportunity to cast his own lure.

"Look at this," he said, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned a shoulder against her display case. Shepard's head whipped around to meet his gaze. "Like sneaking into the captain's quarters. Heavy risk, but the prize…"

One of her eyebrows tilted up, but the corresponding twitch he'd hoped for from those lips didn't materialize. "Really?" she said. "That's the best you could do?"

His right shoulder shrugged against cool metal. "Just seeing if you get as good as you give."

Her eyebrow dropped. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" The words sounded weary; instead of snapping out, they trudged from her mouth, heavy and dull.

"It means I bet you don't arch your back over everyone's desk while you ask how they keep in shape."

Shepard blinked slowly, like all the staring she'd been doing made the movement unfamiliar. A sigh escaped through her nose, and she reached up to rub two fingers across her forehead. "Look. If you're here to talk about how much you don't want to talk, I've got other things to worry about."

The smartest soldiers—the ones who survived—identified failures quickly and moved on instead of slogging away on a planned tactic. Uncrossing his arms, he stepped down into Shepard's living area. Normally he liked this part of a conversation, when everyone laid their cards on the table, when all the bullshit got stripped away to reveal the meat of the matter. But looking down at Shepard, meeting her eyes as they narrowed, he felt his heart stutter a little out of rhythm.

"You're right," Jacob said. "I didn't come here to talk."

Those dark eyes kept watching him as Shepard stood. "We're on our last hours," he continued, "heading straight into the enemy. I wanted…" He started pacing again, couldn't help it, taking refuge in the familiar movement of well-trained muscle. "I want you. Before we win, lose, whatever. Doesn't matter."

Forcing his feet to stop in front of her, he stopped his mouth for a moment too, not to hold back the words, but to make sure they came out right. "I love you."

Shepard blinked again, and for half a second, he wondered if she'd throw him out—or throw him across the room to crash into the empty fish tank. Then the corner of her mouth curled up in that way she had, that way that was so damn Shepard. She sauntered toward him, and his breath escaped him in a long exhale. "Sounds like you better make every minute count, Mr. Taylor."

With his heart still hammering, he reached out, pulling her to him with one hand, draping it over his shoulder, giving him access to her lips, her jaw, her throat. Breath brushed his cheek as Shepard let out a soft sigh. But breath wasn't good enough; he wanted to feel her skin on his, and beneath them, in the _Normandy_'s cockpit, some instrument counted down the distance to the relay.

He pulled back to peel off his shirt and toss it behind him. Shepard's smile widened, her eyes taking on a predatory gleam as she reached out to place her hands against his stomach. He let her steer him, walking backward until his knees collided with the foot of the bed. His arm circled her waist as he fell back and Shepard fell on top of him. Those distracting lips pressed down, hungry, insistent, and he let her in, savoring the taste. These few hours were still stolen, but hours in Shepard's bed were miles beyond minutes captured in the armory.

She ran her tongue along the back of his teeth, then pulled back, holding him down by the shoulders so he couldn't follow. Sitting on his waist, she ripped open the fasteners of her captain's jacket, shrugged it off her shoulders, and tossed it to the floor. The black tank top she wore beneath quickly followed. When his eyes dropped to the black lace bra that remained, she rocked her hips back; he looked up again fast enough to catch her smug smirk.

In retaliation, Jacob surged to sit upright and slid one arm up the long length of her spine, then dropped her backward to hang upside-down, like the dip at the end of a dance. Holding all of the weight of her upper body on one arm, he began to unlatch his boot with the other hand. Shepard snorted a laugh, hooking her ankles around his waist and lacing her fingers behind his neck. When he finished with one boot and sock, he switched his hold to the other arm and worked on the other. Then he pulled her up again, pressing her chest against his, nothing but a thin lace barrier between skin.

"That's quite a skill, Mr. Taylor," Shepard said, her dark eyes centimeters from his.

"I thought we were finished with that Mr. Taylor business," he replied.

"At least I use your first name on occasion," Shepard retorted. She leaned into him, her lips against his cheek. "I want to hear you say it, Jacob," she breathed.

After kissing a line up her jaw, he ended at her ear. "Faith," he murmured.

When he pulled back to meet her gaze, she smirked at him. "Was that so hard?"

He didn't answer. Somehow that one word drove home the intimacy of their situation more than the fact that she was sitting on his lap topless. Instead he asked, "How'd you get a name like that anyway?"

One of her eyebrows twitched up. "Says the man named for the father of the twelve tribes of Israel." She shrugged, and her gaze dropped to his chest. "My mother's parents were Christians. Old-fashioned Bible thumpers. They raised my mother that way. She avoided them after she enlisted, but they reconciled while she was pregnant with me."

A smile curled up Jacob's lips. "Shepard the peacemaker."

The snort she issued this time held considerably less humor, and the eyes that returned to his held tight at the edges. "Until First Contact. Then suddenly my grandparents were droning on and on about the asari goddess. After that, my name was just another weapon in my mother's self-righteous crusade to prove their hypocrisy." Shepard shook her head slightly. "It wasn't the first time she used me for her own ends, and it sure as hell wasn't the last."

Shepard's Cerberus file, before it dissolved into medical jargon, contained a vid of the funeral. Jacob had played through it once, though he'd seen it when it was first broadcast, just like everyone else. The rousing speech of the proud mother, the Alliance officer standing straight and tall next to the holo of her dead daughter, had garnered applause and even a few cheers from the crowd on the Citadel.

Shepard had turned away from him, toward the blue glow of the fish tank, so he could see the tight set of her jaw. He knew that look, knew how it felt. He knew the tension, the dread that was building inside her as she braced for the onslaught of unwelcome questions with unwelcome answers.

"What do you believe?" he asked.

She turned back, brow furrowed, blinking, and he knew that look too, that look of surprise when someone didn't push, didn't ask what you expected, didn't poke the exposed wound to satisfy their own pointless curiosity. He'd gotten the same look when she'd promptly changed the subject at the first sign of his reluctance to discuss his father.

The surprise passed. The furrows smoothed away, and Shepard's smirk returned. "I believe in my ability to hit my enemy harder than he can hit me."

Jacob felt his lips curl up in response. "So do I."

The edges of Shepard's smirk softened, and she reached up both hands to cup his face before pulling him into another deep kiss. One arm curved around her waist, and he stretched back with the other to hoist them further up the bed. A few good scoots and he lay back against her pillows, Shepard pressed on top of him. She moved against him, skin sliding on skin, heat and friction, and when she broke this kiss, they both panted for breath.

She pushed back to sit up again, this time without a smirk, her focus zeroing in on removing her boots. His hands skimmed to the front of her waist, to her belt; he tugged it loose before unbuttoning her pants and dipping his hands inside to span her hips. After the dull thuds of her boots hitting deck, Shepard leaned over him. With a strength that no longer surprised him, she supported her weight on her arms as she slid her legs forward. The fabric of her pants bunched around his wrists as she freed herself in one smooth movement. She ended straddling his waist, then reached behind to toss her pants to follow her boots. As she brought her hand back, slender fingers pressed along his inner thigh and a ripple of tingling energy pulsed toward his groin.

Jacob bit down hard, and his startled gasp morphed to a sharp inhale through his nose. Shepard smiled down at him. "You're not the only one with skill," she said.

Without breaking her gaze, he ghosted his fingers forward until his thumbs rested against the creases between her hips and her thighs. His amp hummed as he ignited a spark along his nerves. It flared, cascading down the neurons to his spine, then trickling down his arms to release through his fingertips. Shepard's eyes squeezed shut, and the muscle beneath his hands trembled.

"You're not the only one who can play that game," he reminded her.

Her eyes opened, and she looked down at him, framed by the stars rushing across the skylight. "No games," she said. "Not tonight."

He nodded, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her down, surging up to meet her lips, her skin, her hips, and doing his best to ignore the ticking clock on her nightstand.

* * *

Afterward, when their breathing returned to normal and their hearts slowed, they settled into a more comfortable position. Shepard lay on top of him, her legs straddling his hips, her arms crossed on his chest, her cheek pillowed on the back of her hand. Jacob dozed while his fingertips sketched out designs on the soft skin of her waist. Even behind closed eyelids, his mind conjured up the stars streaking past above them.

"I'd like to see two Reapers do that," Shepard said into the stillness.

Jacob grunted without opening his eyes. "No thanks. _Fornax_ is bad enough already."

"I wonder how they reproduce."

"They probably just build more of themselves."

"Yeah, but how?"

He shrugged. The feel of his skin sliding on the sweat-slick sheets was familiar, but even with the fight ahead, he felt relaxed, calm, the opposite of everything he'd felt after his nightmare of Morinth. "You'd have to ask a tech."

Silence dropped over them again, but instead of settling into it, Shepard shifted. Her palms flattened against his chest, and she pushed up and back until she sat on his thighs. Jacob opened his eyes, but she was looking away from him, toward the old N7 helmet on the desk. Black scorch marks covered the bubbled surface of the red paint, and a dusting of red flakes coated the desk in a neat circle around the display stand.

"What's on your mind, Shepard?"

She shook her head but didn't respond. His hands smoothed the lean muscle of her legs, the only part of her he could still reach while lying back. "If there's something, now's the time to unload."

She turned back to him, one eyebrow quirking. "Because we'll probably be dead in a few hours?"

With little effort, his upper body rose in a smooth, practiced movement. "Because if you're focused, we've got a chance of surviving this," he said. He slid his palms up her back, and a shiver coursed down her spine.

She blew out a breath that cooled the beads of sweat on his chest. "Saren didn't know he was indoctrinated. Not until the end."

Jacob frowned. "What's your point?"

"My point," she snapped, "is that bringing that IFF on board was a bad call. A stupid call."

Tension stiffened the muscles beneath his fingertips, and he pushed his thumbs deep, digging out the knots. "We have to get through that relay. You didn't have a choice."

"I didn't have a choice," she repeated. An irritated twitch of her shoulders dislodged his hands. "I wonder how many times Saren told himself that."

The sliver of space between them didn't allow for him to cross his arms over his chest. He settled for balling his hands into fists on the mattress instead. "You're not indoctrinated, Shepard."

Dark eyes glared at him. "How the hell do you know?" she demanded. This close, when the air behind her words prickled goosebumps on his skin, he had an easier time spotting the hints of fear lurking in the cracks of her anger.

"I know because of this." One of his hands uncovered one of hers in the sheet, and his fingers wormed into the spaces between hers. When he brought their interlaced hands up, their forearms aligned, elbow to wrist. "This isn't electricity in a circuit. This is human. Skin to skin." His grip tightened just enough to feel the give of her skin, the resistance of the tendon, the strength of the bone. "Organic."

Her gaze flicked to their joined hands. She lowered them back to the bed, but she didn't let go. "Just watch your ass in there."

"I always do," he replied.

"I'm serious." When she looked up to him again, the cracks had closed, welded shut, tight as armor. "Those bastards stole two years of my life. They violated my ship and took my crew. They get _nothing_ else from me."

Suspicion wriggled into his gut, and he narrowed his eyes. "I'm not sitting on the sidelines, Shepard."

She raised an eyebrow. "No shit. I need you engaging the enemy." A pointed fingernail rose up to poke into his shoulder, hard enough to leave a crescent-shaped indentation on his skin. "But if you pull any heroic bullshit that gets you killed, I _will_ have Miranda piece you back together so I can kick your ass. Meat and tubes, Mr. Taylor. Are we clear?"

He held back his smile. "Crystal, Commander."

"Good." She kicked one leg up and over him, then slid off the bed to stand. "Let's go get cleaned up."


	7. Chapter 7

_Author's note: A big thank you to Prisoner 24601 for reading over this chapter._

_

* * *

_

A moment of silence. Chaos giving way to stillness. Somewhere underneath the brief flash of unconsciousness, Jacob wondered if he'd died.

But before he could reach any conclusion as to how he felt about that, life came roaring back in the screech of shearing metal and the pressure of cold weight across his chest. His eyes blinked open, and Shepard's eyes looked back. From her creased brow, his gaze dipped down to her moving mouth, but the words were lost in the destruction unfolding around them. Then her lips set in a thin line, and he felt the weight atop him lift as she grimaced.

His hands were already moving to help her, clawing and grasping at the edges of the beam that pinned him to the Collector platform. Dull pain throbbed through his right shoulder, the arm Shepard had grabbed when he went tumbling down the first tilted platform; he realized her grimace meant she was probably feeling the same. She huffed out a breath that he saw in the shape of her lips rather than heard, then the weight of the beam settled on him again as she stepped back. One second his muscles strained to keep the beam from crushing down on his chest, and the next dark energy prickled across his skin as Shepard sent the metal slab flying with an outraised palm. Jacob staggered to his feet as the platform shifted below them. Shepard grabbed his shoulder, drawing his attention, and her mouth formed a single word.

_Run. _

The grip changed to a shove, and conscious thought gave over to muscle memory and instinct. Garrus was already several steps ahead. Jacob followed in his wake, struggling to keep up despite Garrus's bulky armor. At an all-out sprint, the turian's upper body leaned forward, his head bobbing, and Jacob half-expected him to spread his arms and suddenly launch into flight.

Glancing back, Jacob saw Shepard pause, lifting her assault rifle to scatter the seeker swarm that followed. He skidded to a stop, his boots sliding in debris, and unholstered his own rifle to fire into the swirling horde. Shepard threw a glare over her shoulder, waving him on with an irritated flick of her wrist. Turning slowly, keeping his head toward her, he jogged a few more paces until a deafening roar swallowed up even the sounds of the Reaper chamber's death throes. He whipped around as the _Normandy_ slid into the gap directly in front of them, with Joker of all people leaning out and unleashing a spray of cover fire. Garrus sprinted to close the distance, then launched himself through the open doorway. The engine noise engulfed pounding boot steps as Jacob bounded over loose chunks of broken platforms and leaped onto the ship. He caught himself on the airlock frame, then turned, his hand outstretched, to help Shepard up.

Except she wasn't there. She'd paused longer than he'd thought and now she tore toward them, head down, bent low to avoid the rippling cyclone of seekers. He held tight to his panic, telling himself she wouldn't stumble, wouldn't fall. But whether she would or not became almost moot in the next moment—the moment when another fucking platform fell, crashed into the one nearest the ship, and created an unbridgeable gulf between Shepard and safety. Without thought, without tearing his eyes from the muscles of Shepard's legs still pumping toward them, Jacob shifted his stance. As the toe of Shepard's boot reached the extreme edge of the far platform, as she pushed down and sprang off, he threw his rifle to the deck and raised his arms.

"She's not going to make it." Tension tightened Garrus's voice, making it thinner, higher, almost human.

"Like hell," Jacob spat.

His amp sizzled as the neural implants grafted throughout his body sucked in dark energy. He held it for a fraction of a second, smelled ozone, smelled burnt toast, then let it shoot down his arms, past his fingertips, across the air between him and Shepard. In the next second, Shepard's slowing momentum accelerated, and she hurtled toward them, falling sideways faster than gravity. The energy snapped out with an audible crack as her head slammed into his chest. They flew back into the _Normandy_, into the opposite bulkhead. Jacob grunted as his head met ship and Shepard's body rammed the bruise already blooming across his stomach from a Collectors' bullet his armor had barely stopped.

He crumpled to the deck, his gloved fingers curling in the grating as spots swam across his eyes. Slim fingers rested for a moment at the side of his neck, then vanished along with retreating footsteps. Different fingers—three, ending in talons—wrapped around his upper arm and steadied him as the deck beneath shifted.

"Can the new armor stand up to a radiation pulse?" Garrus asked.

Jacob shook his head, and the spots resolved into a crouching turian with fluttering mandibles. "Not this much," he answered. From the cockpit, EDI's voice counted down the last seconds. "How about your body armor? It's for radiation."

Garrus's mandibles flared again. "Not this much."

Jacob's response changed to a wince as energy buildup prickled along his skin, like a static shock in every pore, the sensation of hitting a mass relay at top speed without any of the usual entrance protocols for dumping the extra biotic feedback.

"Not going to be a problem," he said just before the ship lurched. After a moment's hesitation, he pulled off one of his gloves with his teeth and pressed his fingertips against the bulkhead, grunting as the excess energy in his amp discharged into the metal. Glancing toward the cockpit, he saw Shepard pulling back from the console, shaking her hand like it'd been burned. She bent down for a few more words with Joker, then walked back toward them. Jacob nodded to Garrus, and the turian released his arm, allowing him to push to his feet on his own power. By the time he'd pulled off his other glove and scooped up his rifle, Shepard stood before them, hands on her hips.

"You two all right?" she asked, but her eyes were on Jacob.

Meeting those eyes as they stood safe aboard the ship, he felt adrenaline seeping away. A few hours ago he'd muttered a short prayer for this moment or something like it. Seeing her in one piece while he stood on his own two feet was actually more than he'd asked for. But instead of grinning like an idiot or pulling her into his arms, he felt his jaw clench as hot anger reignited in his chest.

"We'll live," he replied.

"Glad to hear it." Shepard's gaze flicked to Garrus. "Get to the medbay. Both of you." When she turned back to Jacob, a smirk lifted her lips. "I've got to have a little talk with the boss."

She sauntered past them with the sway that was pure Shepard, and Jacob's hands curled into fists, squeezing his gloves and tightening his grip on the rifle. Garrus followed her with a slight limp Jacob hadn't noticed before. His own bruises started to make themselves known as he walked after the turian, but when Garrus stopped in front of the elevator, he turned aside, heading for the door to the armory corridor that Shepard had disappeared through.

"You coming?" Garrus asked.

"After I put my gear up," Jacob answered. The turian nodded as the elevator door hissed open and he stepped inside. Jacob stalked into the armory, grateful that Garrus hadn't pressed the issue. As it was he was having a hard time keeping a lid on his anger. He knew a long elevator ride would unleash the torrent of questions simmering in his gut, number one being, _How the hell did the turian not say a goddamn word as Shepard handed the Collector base over to a man determined to make the lives of every nonhuman a living goddamn hell?_

His rifle clattered onto the armory table with a satisfying thunk, but the gloves he threw down on top didn't make a sound. Resisting the urge to kick a dent in one of the table legs, Jacob bent over the tabletop, pressing his hands into the cool metal, forcing deep breaths through his nose. He'd put up with a lot, bit his tongue, stood aside while Shepard let Garrus shoot that other turian, let Mordin shoot his former student, let Miranda kill her friend. He hadn't even been sure she was wrong. Shepard wasn't there to babysit; she let her team make their own choices, let them sort out their own business. He knew in his gut if he'd asked for it, she would have let his father live, would have called for an Alliance pickup. But he hadn't asked. He'd handed his father a pistol with one shot, then walked away. That was on him.

But this time he'd asked. He'd told her it was over the line. They were there to get the job done, and the job was to destroy that base. Instead it was still out there, floating full of pods with corpses and tubes of liquefied human matter. Nausea twisted his stomach as he remembered the muffled screams of the colonist that disintegrated right in front of their eyes. And now Collector bodies, scorched and twisted by radiation, would cover every surface.

The metal tabletop beneath him wasn't reflective, but Jacob could feel the Cerberus logo burning into the left side of his chest. Straightening, he stripped the top half of his armor off and tossed it to the deck. The air from the vents eased the feeling of sweat and grime coating his skin. A shower would do better, but the thought of huddling in a tiny stall laced with pipes didn't appeal after what they'd seen on the base.

Turning to check his console made the bruise on his abdomen protest—loudly—but the medbay didn't hold much appeal either. Instead he pulled up the armor systems status, intending to get a quick read on the damage. Every subsystem flared back with blinking red lights. He sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes, but part of him was grateful for the distraction. If there was any lesson to be learned from the first _Normandy_, it was that you didn't fly around with your pants down, no matter how safe the sector you were heading to seemed. Tension from his jaw and shoulders dissolved as he fell into the familiar routine of analyzing maintenance conditions and typing up notes for the engineering team. When the door to the armory hissed open sometime later, several seconds passed before his stomach remembered to twist. His fingers hovered over the console, his momentum and concentration broken as approaching boot steps clacked across the deck.

"Is there a reason you're at your station half out of uniform? Not that I'm complaining, mind you."

Jacob tried to force his hands back into action. Only one finger got the message, jabbing down hard enough to earn an affronted beep from his console. "Ship's armor took a beating. I need to recalibrate the system."

"That answers half my question." Shepard slid into his peripheral vision as she leaned against his station. His abdominal muscles tensed as cool fingertips grazed the bruise across his stomach. "Chakwas said you haven't been up to the medbay yet."

"I'll get there," he said, not looking up from the readouts.

Shepard's sigh teased across the skin of his bare arm. She pulled her hand back to cross her arms under her chest. "Are you going to tell me what's bothering you, or do I have to guess?"

That she'd play dumb with him made him grit his teeth and meet her eyes. "Go ahead. I bet you get it in one."

A narrowed brown gaze glared back. "Just for the record, pissy and petulant are not attractive on you."

Even before she got her scars fixed, he'd never been bothered by the physical consequences of her death, her resurrection, but this time he turned away from the faint glow of red still lingering behind her pupils. "Well, that's a real fucking shame, isn't it?"

Her arms exploded out in a wide gesture, nearly slamming into his shoulder in the process. "Fuck me, Jacob, what the hell do you want me to say?"

His hands curled around the edge of his console in a death grip. "I want you to tell me how you possibly justify that _thing_ still floating out there," he began in a low voice. "I want you to tell me why the hell there isn't a debris field occupying that space. I want you to explain why the _fuck_ you would hand that kind of technology over to the goddamn fucking Illusive Man."

Shepard didn't respond, just pulled her arms back across her chest in silence. She didn't speak until he turned his head to face her again, like she'd been waiting, like he was some unruly school kid. "Don't hold back, Jacob. Tell me how you really feel."

"You're making jokes now?" he retorted.

"No." Her voice was quiet, even, no trace of the outburst from before. "I'm trying to figure out how someone like you really can't see what I'm trying to do here."

"Someone like me?" His voice rose as his eyes narrowed. "What the hell does that mean?"

She actually fucking shrugged. "It means that, unlike me, you joined Cerberus of your own free will. So you could get the job done."

"The_ job_ was to blow that base."

Shepard shook her head. "No. The job is to fight off the Reapers. We won one battle and now you think we've won the war? I thought you were smarter than that."

Incredulous eyes looked her over from head to toe. He'd always made it a rule never to be intimidated by anyone, never to put much stock in titles or ranks; you believe the hype, you start to believe someone's better—or worse—than you. He'd never seen the Hero of the Citadel when he looked at Shepard. But for the first time, he felt like he saw the Butcher of Torfan. "There are some things even war can't justify. But I'm starting to think you don't get that."

Shepard's arms lowered almost in slow motion, then one of her hands raised up to stab a finger in his direction. "You are over the line, Taylor. If you don't like how I run my ship, you're free to get off at the next port."

As her anger rose, their positions reversed—his arms crossed over his chest; his voice went low. "So that's it? Fall in line or get the hell out?"

"This may not be an Alliance ship, but I expect my crew to treat me with respect," she snapped. "I did what I had to do."

"What you had to do," he repeated. "I wonder how many times Saren said _that_."

Jacob had half a second to recognize the look on Shepard's face—the look of surprise that crossed someone's face, the widening of their eyes when they were shot at close range. Then he was watching her walk away, none of the usual saunter in her stride. Her boot steps clipped short and close, like she held back just shy of running. And then he was watching the door slide closed.

He turned back to his console, bent low, hands braced against the metal, teeth clenched around the new pain that throbbed behind his bruise.

"Fuck," he muttered.


	8. Chapter 8

_Author's note: Thank you once again to Prisoner 24601 for her beta._

* * *

Shepard slammed her fist against the control to her cabin door, and it hissed open. Stepping across the threshold, she paused, unconsciously waiting for the second hiss as it closed. When the silence continued, Shepard whipped her head around to glare at the gaping doorway. The panel on the inside of her cabin blinked red. She stared out into the hallway, then down at her curled knuckles, reinforced by bone weave technology and Cerberus implants. With a snarl of frustration, she dropped into her desk chair and flipped on her console, ignoring the rumpled bed across the room, ignoring the suffocating awareness that she was going to spend the night working instead of getting drunk and fucking like rabbits, ignoring the tight ball of fear and doubt lurking in her stomach beneath all the cybernetics.

Her gaze flicked to the empty spot on her desk, the spot that had been the brief home of a picture frame before it found a more permanent residence in the garbage chute. Why anyone in Cerberus thought a picture of Kaidan Alenko would make her feel like joining their team with sunshine and smiles was a fucking mystery to her. She suspected Joker had a hand in it, and if she'd had proof and hadn't needed the valuable but so-goddamn-annoyingly breakable pilot, he might have lost that hand. If they'd wanted to inspire her, they could have left a picture of her father in uniform. She'd gotten over his memory being marred by grief and used as a weapon long ago.

She wondered how many times in her life the words "I love you" were followed by "You've betrayed everything I believe in." Her mother after Torfan. Alenko on Horizon. And Taylor made three.

She'd shrugged off the first two. Accusations of betrayal had flowed from her mother's mouth for years; Torfan just provided the excuse to stop speaking altogether. Alenko's recriminations had surprised her, but she'd left Horizon with a feeling less like anger and more like guilt. Until that moment, she'd never considered her time spent with the lieutenant as leading him on, for all she knew that he put her on a pedestal she didn't deserve. He'd been attractive, smarter than the average grunt, seemingly capable of dealing with his own issues without hand-holding and ass-wiping. That he'd _mourned_ her when she'd died—not just raised a glass at the loss of a good CO and a great lay but actually grieved and carried the guilt of surviving—hadn't even crossed her mind until landing on that colony.

Turning back to her console, she called up the scans from the Reaper ship and pushed back the memory of Jacob lying unconscious under a thick metal beam, of the brief moment when the importance of the mission was nearly overwhelmed by the thought that even with the Collectors defeated, Shepard might lose.

The soft thump of the elevator sliding into place floated through the open doorway, followed by the sharper thud of boots on deck that stopped just inside the threshold.

"Get out," Shepard told them, her eyes still on the console.

The silence that followed stretched long enough that she half-expected a confused response in Miranda's clipped accent or Garrus's reverberating tone to break it.

"No."

She hated herself a little for her response to Taylor's voice, the goose bumps that prickled the back of her neck in anticipation of a touch that wouldn't come, the warm rush of satisfaction in her gut, like she'd been waiting for him. The first time she'd heard him speak, the first time he'd talked about his history with the Alliance—the highlights and the low points—she'd half-wondered if he'd been assigned to her on purpose, a plant intended to catch her eye and get to her. Some days, she still wondered.

"Get out or I'll call Grunt up here to drag you out. I'll be nonspecific about which body part he should use as a handle."

"I'm not leaving."

Pushing her chair back, Shepard rose to her feet and turned to face him, crossing her arms across her chest and ignoring any further traitorous signals from her body, including her eyes' desperate desire to devour the contours of muscle beneath the tight shirt he wore. The thin black material bore no Cerberus logo. "Then why don't you tell me—exactly—what _the fuck_ you want from me, Taylor?"

He copied her posture, folding his arms and widening his stance, looking ready for battle even without a weapon in his hand. "I want an explanation. And I'm here to let you give me one. I figure I owe you that much."

Beneath her arms, Shepard's fingers curled against her palms again, but she kept her voice even. "We have sex and now I'm supposed to justify myself to you? Did Miranda know about this clause? Is that what scared her off?"

The muscles in his jaw clenched. "Commander fucking Shepard doesn't justify herself to anyone. Your judgment is the only one that matters. That it?"

Every ache and pain of the fight, every bit of grime that a shower hadn't managed to wash away crept through her skin and muscle. Dropping her arms, she turned away from him, heading down the stairs and toward the bed. Using it only for sleep suddenly didn't seem like such a horrible prospect. "Now you sound like my mother."

Boot steps rang on the deck again, and she stifled a sigh as she sank onto the edge of the bed and he followed her down to the living area. "Your mother is a decorated Alliance officer," he said.

A wry laugh choked out of her mouth. "Really? You? You are going to give me a lecture on parent-child relationships?"

The furrows in his brow dissolved as his eyes widened. He opened his mouth and then closed it again before blowing a loud breath through his nose. "I'm just saying she might have had something to add to the conversation. How old were you when you stopped listening?"

"Old enough to know I'd heard everything she had to say," Shepard snapped back.

"And you somehow already know what I have to say?" Jacob retorted. His arms returned to their position over his chest. "I'm not your mother, Shepard."

Her hands on the mattress propelled her to her feet, then settled on her hips. "And I'm not your father, Jacob. So stop looking at me like I mind-fucked and raped innocent women."

Instead of exploding like she expected, Jacob just looked away for a moment before turning back to her with narrowed eyes. "And you don't think what the Illusive Man is going to do with that base will be as bad as that? Worse?"

Twin flares of adrenaline surged in her gut, like she was simultaneously annoyed and turned on that he wouldn't rise to the bait. "According to you, it will be as bad as what Saren did."

Jacob raised a hand and rubbed it over his face, pressing his thumb and forefinger into his eyes. "I'm sorry, all right? I say stupid shit when I get upset. I'm human." When he dropped his hand, dark eyes caught hers. "So are you."

"You sure?" Shepard asked. "You probably know more about what's inside me than I do. You watched it happen, right? Should we ask Miranda? Is she the one who taught you to exploit people's weaknesses, or is that standard Cerberus training?"

Those dark eyes narrowed. "How about we leave Miranda out of this?"

Shepard's shoulders bobbed in a casual shrug, much more casual than she felt. "I will if you will."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

She'd pushed it all down, disgusted by the stab of jealousy she'd felt. But the bullet hole from the armory had broken open the scab of the smaller wound, mingling pain. "'She requires a better man than I'? Really, Jacob? And what the fuck do I require?"

The barest flicker twitched across his brow before smoothing out again. "Someone who won't put up with your shit," he shot back, still cool, not defensive, not protesting. Not dismissing Miranda as trivial, which at another time, from another man, Shepard might have respected.

Her arms rose to cross over her chest. "Oh, come on, Taylor. You really ready to let all that go? She's perfect, right? Just go ask her."

"She's not perfect," he replied. "She's human."

"And I'm just an indoctrinated husk."

A tight, knowing smile accompanied the slow shake of his head. "You can't stand it, can you? Someone you care about, someone who matters, taking the other side against you. Having a different opinion. Not bowing down at the altar of Commander Shepard's infinite wisdom. And you think _Miranda's_ arrogant?"

Her lips parted, but a moment passed before the sound spit out. "Fuck you."

"Why?" he demanded. "Because I think you fucked up?"

Shepard's hands sliced through the air. "Jesus fucking Christ, Taylor. You people drag me back from the _dead_ because you haven't got the balls to man up and fight this battle yourselves, and now you tell me you don't _like_ the way I do it?"

"That's exactly what I'm telling you." Jacob paced a few steps toward her desk before turning back to her. "I _don't _like it. I think it's asking for another goddamn level of hell to get dumped on us, one that _we_ made."

"You really think Cerberus is a drop of piss compared to the Reapers?" she snapped.

"I think the Illusive Man could start a war that would fuck up a large portion of the galaxy," he shot back.

"He can do that without my help."

His hands tightened into fists at his sides. "Then why the hell are you helping him?"

"I'm not helping him!" Shepard shouted. "I'm helping the fucking galaxy!"

She stalked toward the empty fish tank, half-tempted to slam her fist into the glass, to see if she'd end up in the medbay with a broken hand or if the water would flow, blue and glowing, like something from a dream.

"I've got _one ship_, Taylor! One fucking ship with a Cerberus crew and a handful of people I recruited, none of whom are military and all of whom have questionable motives. That's what I've got to fight an entire _civilization_ of huge sentient machines. One of them nearly destroyed the Citadel, Jacob. _One_!" Whirling around, she glared at him. Relief at sharing her burden warred with stubborn anger that he'd wrested a justification from her after all. "This isn't David and Goliath. This is David and a fucking million Goliaths. Someone hands me a slingshot and a stone, I'm sure as hell taking it."

His hands had unclenched, returned to their usual position, tucked into his crossed arms. "And when they start shooting you with the slingshot? Or start shooting innocent people?"

"Then I'll deal with it then. One war at a time."

"You don't know that base will help us fight the Reapers."

"And you don't know it won't," Shepard replied, placing her hands on her hips. "What happens if we'd destroyed it and then somewhere down the line we figure out it had information we could have used? That somewhere buried in Collector data was the key to a weakness? What then? I get on the fucking extranet and say, 'Sorry you're all going to die, but at least I took a noble moral stand'?"

She shook her head, then stabbed a finger toward the quiet console just to the side of the open doorway. "What do you think would have happened if Joker hadn't unshackled EDI? He broke about a million Council laws by unleashing an AI, but it saved this ship. It saved the mission."

Jacob threw a quick glance at the console before turning back to her. "AI history notwithstanding, I trust EDI a hell of a lot more than I trust the Illusive Man."

"I don't trust either of them," Shepard said. "But I learned a long time ago that you make the big decisions while the shit is flying and things get out of control real fast."

"Sometimes you don't have a choice."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "No shit, asshole. But this time I did have a choice. I had the choice to step back, look at what we have, and then decide. That base becomes a liability, we nuke it later. But if we'd destroyed it now, we'd never get it back."

"And the Illusive Man will just let you destroy it later?" Jacob asked with a raised eyebrow.

"He can't stop me. And he knows it. I already told him we do things my way now."

For the first time since following her down to the living area, Jacob stepped toward her, closing some of the space between them. "How will you know if it's become a liability? How are you even going to know what he's doing with it? Ask him?"

"I… " Shepard frowned, her gut burning at the way he always managed to put her on the spot, always managed to ask the question she wasn't expecting. "How about you come up with our strategy for once?"

"Put T'soni on it. And Miranda." The ready answer fell from his lips with no hesitation, and once again, she was torn between being impressed and being irked that he was prepared when she was not.

Shoving her feelings behind the mission, she raised an eyebrow. "You think she'd rat out the boss?"

"I think she's too smart not to."

"So is this it?" Shepard asked. She took a step closer to him, pushing into _his _space, challenging _him_. "Are these your conditions for staying? I say no, you decide you don't like how I do things and walk out on me just like you did the Alliance?"

She expected him to snap back, but only a weary sigh escaped his lips as he rubbed his forehead, his eyes retreating to the deck. "I'm trying to do what's right here, Shepard."

"So am I! So is every last goddamn person on this ship. You're not all alone up there on the moral high ground, Taylor. We got where we are by stepping on the corpses of every single one of Cerberus's victims."

His eyes came back to hers. "The Illusive Man knows I have problems with what he's done."

"And yet you gave him enough of the benefit of the doubt to join up with him. Where the hell is my benefit of the doubt, Jacob?" The corner of her eye snagged on the bed beside them, and she felt something tighten in her chest. "Or do people you say you love not get your trust?"

She watched his Adam's apple bob, his jaw clench. She'd never pushed him about his past. She never pushed any of her crew. They wanted to talk, they could talk, but she wasn't one of those COs who played at being everybody's best friend. His past was _his_ past, not some interesting tidbit for her to collect and polish and put on a pretty shelf.

But when he'd had his past shoved in his face, she'd had a front-row seat. She didn't need Jacob to say it to know when a sickeningly sunny beach lurked behind his dark eyes.

"You're asking me that?" he asked.

Shepard moved closer again, almost close enough to touch, almost close enough to feel the warmth that always seemed to radiate off him. "I'll say it again. I'm not your father." This time the words were soft, without challenge, and when she looked up at him, when she saw the crack in his cool exterior, the pained confusion that lined his forehead and widened his eyes, she felt a weight in her chest beyond anything she'd felt at the news of her own death. "So what happens now?"

"I get patched up," he murmured. "Hit the showers."

"Not what I meant." Resisting the urge to touch him tested every ounce of military discipline she'd had drilled into her head from the time she could walk.

The small half-smirk that quirked his lips left her torn between infuriated and desperate to throw him onto the bed. "You just said you shouldn't make decisions when you're in the shit."

"Fine." Choking down her disappointment, she waved a hand toward the doorway. "Dismissed."

He turned away, and her gaze soaked in every detail of the broad shoulders and muscled back as distraction from his retreat. In the doorway, he paused, and her heart thudded hard twice in her chest as he glanced back. "What was the mission?" he asked.

Her brow furrowed as she tried to find the meaning in the question, what it meant to him, what it meant for them, before she gave up with a sigh. "What do you mean?"

His eyes locked on hers. "The mission where you learned not to make decisions in the field if you could help it."

Her back teeth ground together. The words felt like a test, a trap, like there was an answer that was right and an answer that was wrong, and that one would make him stay and the other would make him leave. When her mother asked questions like that, she wanted an excuse to make accusations and declare her own daughter unfit for command.

When her father had asked questions, he'd needed to know the answer. No tests, no shaking his head before she'd even finished speaking, no walking away with the discussion half-unspoken.

Shepard looked up at the man standing in her doorway, a man with serious eyes to match a serious mind and heart, and spoke the word that filled her mind with screams and smoke and the thick stench of blood.

"Torfan."

After a long moment, he nodded slightly—not in approval, just in acknowledgment—then disappeared into the hallway and the waiting elevator. Several seconds passed before Shepard stopped biting down on her lip, determined not to ask if he was coming back.


	9. Chapter 9

_Author's note: So this is it. Thanks so much for reading. And thank you especially to those who reviewed, favorited, or recommended this story._

_And one more thank you to my fabulous beta, Prisoner 24601 (especially since she read this chapter twice)._

_

* * *

_Since the Collector base, a new silence had descended over the _Normandy_, filling the halls, the mess, the medbay, swallowing the faint beep of the doctor's handheld scanner as she slowly circled Jacob. When the crew'd been taken, the silence had been clear, sharp, the slightest noise piercing until even the hum of the engines had seemed to separate into a thousand discrete crackles, each one discernible to the ear. That silence had sharpened the team's focus, gotten them ready to take the fight to the end. Win or lose.

The new silence pressed down heavy, deadening thought. A decent share of the crew milled around the mess, but no sound of conversation filtered through into the medbay. Even Hawthorne was silent, stretched out on the far bunk, though Jacob had never passed a night in crew quarters without the accompaniment of the crewman's snores. Chakwas didn't speak as she stopped in front of him, frowning and tapping the scanner. She never chatted much, wasn't in her bedside manner, but the dark circles under her eyes said this quiet held more exhaustion than efficiency.

Jacob struggled to break through and say something, but despite never seeing the inside of one of those pods, he felt weighed down by the same silence they'd all carried with them from the reality of the Collector base. Like he'd forgotten how to have a normal conversation. Like he'd forgotten how to open his mouth and let something other than accusations out. Like he'd forgotten that words hitting his ears didn't always remind him of everything that was shit in the galaxy, on this mission, in his own life.

"A deep muscle bruise but no internal damage."

When Chakwas spoke, he jumped, but the doctor didn't seem to notice. She slid the scanner up to his shoulder, then used the fingers of her free hand to grip his upper arm and carefully rotate the joint. Her eyes flicked from the scanner readout to the wince he couldn't quite suppress. "You've overextended the tendons."

When she let go, Jacob shrugged, then frowned and reached up to rub at the stiffness. "Could have been worse."

"Yes, I imagine so," Chakwas replied, putting the scanner back into its drawer. "Shepard said you nearly went over a cliff." She turned back and crossed her arms over her chest in her usual all-business way, but Jacob noted how she leaned back against the counter, not quite upright. "I'd like you to skip a few days of your exercise regimen. You need to give those muscles a chance to rest." One eyebrow quirked up as her pursed lips hinted at a smirk. "I won't restrict any other activities."

Jacob didn't reply as she turned back to her desk. Grabbing his shirt, he pulled it on and tugged it down, shielding his bare torso from the teasing air of the vents and the memory of heated skin sliding against his. He knew his body's answer to the question of Shepard. Being back in her cabin, even with the shots flying, even with the ammo of her mother and his father, an almost irresistible piece of him had wanted to pull her in, to feel that human contact, to pretend that nothing in the galaxy mattered as much as the spark that flared whenever he touched smooth skin and tasted full lips. He'd imagined a hot shower to ease the aches of the fight, but his better judgment was nudging him toward a pelting of cold water.

With a muttered "Thanks, doc," he hopped off the bunk and headed to the door. He braced himself to wade back into the subdued stillness of the rest of the ship. Whatever the turmoil in his own head, he knew it was only a matter of time before the crew's murmured conversations grew louder, before the regular games of Skyllian Five broke out, before grumblings over the food resumed. That was this crew. That was humanity.

Stepping out into the corridor, he came face to face with proof that operations were already sliding toward normal. The sharp clack of boot heels rang through the quiet as Miranda approached, not a dark hair out of place, a datapad clutched in a perfectly manicured hand, as if she'd spent the time at the base filing her nails instead of crushing Collector skulls. Blue eyes narrowed to appraise the plain black shirt he wore before sliding to his face. Irritated by her scrutiny and the well-timed ambush, Jacob crossed his arms over his chest as she stopped in front of him.

"What?" he snapped.

Her eyes widened, one eyebrow slipping upward, but her gaze flicked to the medbay behind him before she spoke. "Are you all right?"

He shrugged. "Just bruises."

Miranda's nod was brisk, satisfied. "I thought you and I should talk," she began.

A burst of impatience—of the need to be doing something other than standing and chatting in the hallway—filled him. "Reports already? Can't it wait?"

She blinked at him, taken aback for the second time by his tone. "That's not quite what I meant."

Sighing through his nose, trying to back away from the edge of his own inner battle before it leaked out, he rubbed two fingers into his forehead. "Been a long day, Miranda. Can we just cut right to you telling me what the hell you do mean?"

Her spine straightened and her chin lifted as the hand not holding the datapad rose to sit on her hip. "I mean I know you, Jacob. I know that what Shepard did, what she decided, doesn't sit well with you."

Jacob dropped his hand to look down at her and tucked it back into the other arm still folded across his chest. "You know that, huh?"

"Yes. I do." Somehow Miranda always made her opinion sound like fact. Worse, it usually was. "It's a resource, Jacob. One we'd be foolish to ignore."

"What would you have done?" he pressed.

Not a crack penetrated the perfect veneer. "I'm not leading this mission. Shepard is."

"Yeah. Don't really need the reminder," Jacob said.

Furrows appeared in the flawless skin of Miranda's brow. "You don't trust her judgment?"

Jacob let out a loud breath as he dropped his arms. "That's not…" The words stopped, like they'd slammed into the bulkhead, no matter how desperately he tried to force the answer to break free of his confusion. Shaking his head, he made to walk past her. "I'm going to hit the showers."

A hand on his arm stopped him. "Wait."

He forced himself not to shrug her off, but he couldn't contain the snap in his voice. "I'll give a full report later, Miranda."

This time the sigh of impatience was hers. "This wasn't a report, Jacob. I thought you might _want_ to talk. To a friend."

For a long moment, he felt like too much of a jerk to respond. Then he forced the tension from his shoulders. "Thanks." He couldn't count the number of times he'd unloaded on her since his recruitment—his doubts, his frustrations. The temptation lurked to have it out with her detached logic instead of Shepard's hot anger. He'd never fought with Miranda. She would never have brought his father into a discussion, and he would never have brought in hers. Not long after meeting Shepard, the thought had struck him that maybe that had been part of their problem.

When he didn't say more, Miranda sighed and let her hand drop from his forearm. "Just be careful, Jacob. I don't want you to get hurt."

He knew her well enough to know that was true. He also knew her well enough to know that wasn't all of it. "I won't jeopardize the mission either."

One of her eyebrows lifted, accentuating the perfect arch. "If I thought you were jeopardizing the mission, I would have had you reassigned."

Jacob felt his brow furrow, but before he could reply, Miranda turned to cross the mess and return to her quarters. He shook his head again as he continued on to the showers.

In the crew corridor, he found a clog of waiting crew members. And that he'd missed his window in the shift schedule Gardiner had drafted after the crew's return from the Collector base. Claustrophobic as the shower cells were, most of the crew still scrambled to wash away the smell of those pods. When Jacob took a place in the back of the line, Rolston waved him forward, offering his place to the approving nods of the other crew members gathered. Feeling like an ass but also itching to sluice away the film of sweat and grime covering his skin, Jacob accepted. He washed quickly, using only half the allotted time so Rolston could duck in as well.

After the quick, cold shower, he stood in the corridor, in the center of the milling crew, barely hearing the murmured conversations and hissing doors. Twice on this mission he'd felt this sense of agitation, the lack of a straight path—once when he'd gotten the ping from the _Gernsback_ and then after Morinth. The first he'd dealt with by going to Shepard, who'd set a course and put him back in action, where he liked to be.

The second he'd dealt with by seeking help in a different place. His eyes wandered to the door of starboard observation, and his feet followed. When he pressed the controls, the door slid back to reveal a darkness and a silence that felt welcoming instead of oppressive. Samara stood in front of the observation window, silhouetted against the pinpoints of light streaking past, and Jacob walked forward to join her.

"Meditating?" he asked.

"No," she replied. "I am thinking."

"What's the difference?"

"Meditation offers a respite from consciousness, a chance to untether ourselves from the burdens of sentience."

If Jacob refocused his gaze, if he looked at the window itself instead of the stars beyond, he could make out his own dim reflection. Dark brown eyes looked back at him, a stubborn crease between them that he couldn't relax. "Sounds nice," he murmured.

"Yes," Samara answered. "But the time comes when one must address the issue at hand."

His gaze slid to the other set of eyes reflected in the window. "What's the issue?"

The justicar lowered the angle of her head; the reflection of her large blue eyes lost its light and disappeared. "Our mission is finished. My oath to Shepard has been fulfilled."

He'd been there when Samara had sworn her oath, when she'd knelt on the filthy floor of the Ilium police precinct and promised to uphold Shepard's will. He'd reported back to Miranda and assured her that it seemed enough to guarantee the asari's help in the fight against the Collectors. She'd asked what would happen after the mission, and he'd shrugged before saluting and walking out.

"What will you do now?" he asked.

"I'm not certain." Her gaze went back to the starfield beyond them. "Shepard has asked me to stay."

"Would you really do that?"

"The Reaper threat is beyond anything our civilization has ever faced. If the Code directs me to fight this threat, then I would prefer to do it at Shepard's side."

Even in semi-darkness, Jacob's eyes caught the blue tinge of her skin, the folds along her scalp. "Even if Shepard's working for an organization like Cerberus?"

"That is her decision to make, and I respect that." When Jacob shook his head, the asari turned back to him, her piercing gaze making him wonder how good she'd gotten at reading human facial expressions in her short time among his species.

"Shepard's willingness to take extreme action in pursuit of her goal is admirable." At Jacob's raised eyebrow, the edges of her lips turned up. "If she were to embrace the Code, she would make an excellent justicar."

Jacob snorted. "No offense, but I don't find that reassuring."

"I take no offense," she said, but the trace of a smile faded. "There is a reason that justicars set aside their families and the need to seek out a partner."

Despite grasping the fact that Morinth had been Samara's daughter, Jacob had somehow never connected that truth to the larger one—that Samara's family had included another parent, a partner whom Samara had loved enough to produce three children. A partner she had lost. His mind jumped back to the chasm on the Collector base, to Shepard's legs pumping over thin air, to the moment when even fresh anger hadn't meant a damn thing. Nausea twisted his gut as he imagined her falling, the fierce determination that lit her eyes contorting into fear.

Pushing the image down, he forced his mind back to the present, to the asari standing beside him. "After all he's done, wouldn't a justicar want to deal with the Illusive Man?" he asked.

"Perhaps that duty will fall to someone else," Samara replied. The implication in her gaze, the obligation that it seemed to put on his shoulders, reminded him that she had also raised three children and therefore, like his own mother, didn't need words to command.

"Me?" he scoffed, his eyebrows rising.

"Perhaps you. Perhaps Ms. Lawson. Perhaps another member of this crew. Or someone as yet unknown." A blue hand gestured toward the door behind them and the ship beyond it. "Cerberus is a weapon and thus subject to the will of the one who wields it. In the right hands, it could be a powerful force for justice."

Jacob shook his head again. "I don't think I'd make a very good Illusive Man."

Beneath still-imperative eyes, Samara's lips quirked upward again. "I am sure you could devise your own suitably enigmatic moniker." Her gaze wandered away from his, to the stars, to the million other places where people lived, worked, loved, and died. "Trial often calls us to a destiny beyond what we had imagined for ourselves, forcing us to seek within the strength to answer."

They stood in silence, looking out at the vast expanse. A million places called home, and all of them would burn once the Reapers arrived. Unless someone stopped them.

Unless Shepard stopped them. He'd watched her tear through mechs on the Lazarus base, her scars still raw and gaping. He'd watched her slice through vorcha to reach the ventilators on Omega, even while gasping for air. He'd watched her headbutt a krogan and blow apart a thresher maw. He'd watched her stare down an infant Reaper, right before she launched a missile straight through its mechanical eye. Out in the field she never showed fear, never showed doubt. Relentless.

"The galaxy needs Shepard," Jacob murmured.

The chasm yawned in his mind again, seeking to destroy smug smirks, swinging hips, confident eyes. Seeking to destroy Faith.

"Yes," Samara agreed, and he felt ancient alien eyes on his all-too-human skin. "But what does Shepard need?"

The chasm yawned, and Jacob knew that if Shepard had fallen, he wouldn't have given a damn about the galaxy.

* * *

As Jacob stepped off the elevator, the doors slid closed behind him, cutting off the light and leaving him in a darkness broken only by the blinking of the damaged door panel. He took careful steps toward it and shifted his gaze to the side so the glowing red wouldn't prevent his eyes from adjusting. Once he slipped over the threshold, he stopped. The dark in Shepard's cabin pressed less thick; a soft blanket of blue light unfurled from the empty fish tank, tucking over the rises and valleys of the sheet on the bed and the woman beneath it. Jacob bent down, his fingers nimble enough to compensate for his still-adjusting eyes as he unlaced his boots and tugged off his socks. He padded barefoot across the cold grating of the deck, down the stairs, and into the living area.

Shepard lay with her face turned away from him, the peak of her shoulder sloping down to the arm curled around her pillow, only steady breathing breaking the stillness. Jacob peeled off his shirt and pants, stepped free, then pulled back the corner of the sheet and slid from the cool edge of the bed to the warm center. As he laid his arm over Shepard's waist, she stirred for the first time. He listened in silence to the soft rustling, felt the mattress dip as she shifted beside him. Stillness descended again. Heat thrown by the implant at the back of her neck warmed his chest.

"Does this mean you're staying?"

"Yeah," he replied. "I'm staying."

"Good." Her voice was even, impersonal, the commander's voice. "Tomorrow morning I want you to get Miranda on tracking what the Illusive Man does with that base. I'll give you Liara's transmission code decryptions, too."

The start of a smile tilted his lips as he moved them closer to her skin. "I had a feeling you were going to put that back on me."

She turned beneath his arm, and his hand slid over soft curves and hard muscle. Shadowed brown eyes searched for his in the dim light. "You could have stayed without getting back in my bed."

"I know," he said.

Full lips pulled down into a slight frown. "So why are you here?"

His fingers splayed against her back, not quite pulling her to him, not sure she would come if he did. "I've decided to have faith in you."

Several heartbeats passed as her narrowed gaze studied him. Then, as the pounding in his chest seemed to fill his whole body, he watched the edges of her lips turn up. "Glad to hear it." A strong hand grabbed his shoulder, pushing him down on his back, as one lean leg slid across and she straddled his waist. She leaned over him until every part of their bodies touched; her smile stretched to a canary-eating grin. "I've decided to have you in Faith."

Jacob snorted as he shook his head, savoring the heat, the muscle of this moment. "You're lucky you're so damn you. League of your own."

Warm lips pressed against his jaw before hot breath filled his ear. "You're not so bad yourself, Mr. Taylor."


End file.
